The Sunshine Empire

Sarah Palin found her way back into the news by addressing the Tea Party convention in Nashville (naturally) this past Saturday. She was convinced to finally come once she was promised a $100,000 speaking fee, because when Sarah Palin speaks to her convictions that can get pricey. The news of the speech was her now infamous writing on her hand, but it set off another round of discussions on the pundit shows about her in general and what her plans are. The standard conservative line is that liberals have an irrational blind hate of Sarah Palin, which is not anything like their completely rational blind hate of President Obama. But the reasons that are usually given by conservatives miss the mark.

The reason I most often hear about why liberals hate Sarah Palin is the most quizzical to me. I often hear that liberals hate her because she is an attractive woman. This is actually the most redeeming factor about her. The physical attractiveness of a candidate is central to today’s American political climate whether you are a man or woman. But I challenge any conservative to show me tape of a liberal or progressive saying, “oooooh I hate that Sarah Palin, how dare she be so pretty.”

Another main supposed reason is her religion. Aside from her stance on abortion for a moment, once and for all let’s stop this nonsense. Liberals and progressives do not, I repeat DO NOT hate religion nor religious people. Many liberals and progressives are very devout religious people. My own mother is a devout Catholic and a devout liberal Democrat. What liberals and progressives hate is someone who overly moralizes to them based on their own religious beliefs in the public and governmental square. When it comes to her opposition to legalized abortion there are many liberals who hate her for that, but the issue of abortion is not as homogeneous among American liberalism and progressivism as simple minded conservatives would like to believe. Some of these people take this meme further by saying liberals specifically hate Sarah Palin for not aborting her last child when she found that he would be born with Down Syndrome. I again challenge conservatives to provide video of any progressive saying this.

Conservatives constantly decry anyone for immersing themselves in a culture of victimhood, but nobody has played that political card more often than the former Governor of Alaska. They constantly complain that it is an insult to refer to her as unintelligent and is somehow demeaning women as a whole. Let’s be honest though folks, by all accounts she is. Liberals delighted in calling President George W. Bush stupid, but he at least graduated from Yale and Harvard Business school. Sarah Palin attended 7 different colleges before finally finishing her degree in journalism. Conservatives make the baseless claim that liberals hate Sarah Palin because she’s a working mother in politics. Wrong again. They hate her for using her children as political props, then playing the victim by claiming the media is exploiting said political props.

Basically, liberals and progressives hate Sarah Palin because she is completely intellectually dishonest on every level. The person who complains her opponent lacks experience running things, then runs away from her office before her first term is over. They hate the person that jokes that the President needs a teleprompter when she can’t finish a speech without crib notes written on her hand. A person who calls for the resignation of the White House Chief Of Staff for using a term she then excuses Rush Limbaugh for using. Liberals don’t hate the attractive successful working political mom, they hate the cynical politician moralizing out of both sides of her mouth.