C4P - Who We Are and What We Stand For

There was a comment from SarahPAC spokesperson Meg Stapleton in the recent News-Miner article for which I was interviewed:

SarahPAC and Palin family spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said Conservatives for Palin is not affiliated in any way with the governor, despite several large banners on the site offering ways to donate to SarahPAC.

Based on the content, Stapleton surmised the site bloggers are from the Lower 48. She acknowledged the banners linking to SarahPAC are a concern.

Some readers have wondered if I felt tire tracks on my back this morning.

Our reader "ugafish" wrote in the comment section:

RAM,

I hope you don't think Meg tossed you under a bus. I think she was just trying to make sure people knew that C4P was an independent entity, which is the way you guys want it. They probably asked her questions about C4P that she didn't know, so she just played it safe. I think you're doing an awesome job, and this website is making a positive impact. What was your take on it?

Don't make excuses for Meg.

I want her to send me a bagel now, damnit!

Just kidding.

I understand and I'm not hurt... much... (but I do want that bagel, Meg).

I took no offense at Meg's "concern" comment. I like Meg. I've liked her since the first time I saw her on Greta Van Susteren's show.

The News-Miner article in question was about C4P's recent skirmish with the Jerk from Fairbanks (who, by the way, once made a sexist joke about Gov. Palin). We seem to be making poor Jay a little paranoid. This comment of his is simply golden:

“I would encourage whoever is behind Conservatives for Palin to step out of the shadows,” he said.

We're not in the shadows, Jay. We're in your face.

We're ordinary barbarians here. No one controls us. We're a horde.

I'm sure Ramras has all sorts of fevered imaginings of how C4P is funded by a secret SarahPAC slush fund. (Hey, where's my check, Meg?)

The real honest-to-God truth about C4P would terrify Ramras and others like him. Here's the truth: we are "Cincinnatus" bloggers. We are ordinary citizens. We have dedicated our spare time to rectifying the great wrong committed against an honest and honorable leader during the 2008 election. We watched with horror and helplessness as a decent and sincere woman was savaged by a dangerously biased media. We decided that we wouldn't remain powerless anymore. We would organize, and we would use our brains and our keyboards to set the record straight. You don't have to be a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism to call a spade a spade.

As many of our readers know, most of the C4P Contributors met up at Hot Air. JR, Tim, Mel, and I were regulars in those Hot Air Palin threads. During one conversation someone suggested a blog with contributors, and JR went out and set up a blogger site and bought the domain name for $10. He then hounded me for weeks to join him. I came on board in January. The rest of our team was recruited along the way. Altogether, we hail from New Jersey; Los Angeles (by way of Michigan); East Tennessee; Omaha (by way of South Dakota); Colorado; Virginia; Texas; New York; Wisconsin; Ohio; Georgia; Seattle; the DC Beltway; Amityville, NY (that would be Damian - no joke); England (Sussex to be precise); England (East Yorkshire to be precise); England (by way of the Netherlands); Utah (by way of Alaska); and Alaska (now in exile in North Carolina).

There seems to be some subtle (or not so subtle) suggestion that we're "carpetbagging" in Alaska politics. I'll make a deal with whomever is making that criticism. We'll stop covering Alaska politics as soon as Shannyn Moore stops showing up on Keith Olbermann's show.

Sarah Palin wasn't able to return home from the campaign. The campaign continues, and she is forced to fight a war on two fronts -- the local and the national. As long as the campaign continues, we'll be here to watch her back.

For years Alaskans felt forgotten and misunderstood by the Lower 48. They were tired of people asking them if they lived in igloos. They were annoyed with people who thought that Alaska was an island in the Pacific somewhere south of Texas. Well, the eyes of the nation and the world are now upon you. We respect you. We respect your governor. We respect the great promise your state can provide our country. We look to you with hope. We see our future "Under the Great North Star." We support you, and we wish only the best for you and for our country and for the world.

We are not a "Draft Sarah Palin" website. We are "Conservatives for Palin" because we support her vision of an energy independent America that is more peaceful and more prosperous because we rely on our own resources. We support her respect for the culture of life. We support her belief in limited government and true free market capitalism -- not the crony capitalism that once festered in Alaska or the corporatism that is currently taking hold in this country. We support her belief that America must be strong in order to be peaceful. We do not all agree with her on every issue. We often disagree with each other on specific issues. But we support the overall conservative philosophy that Sarah Palin affirms. Above all we respect her courage and integrity as a true reformer.

It is irrelevant to us whether Sarah Palin runs for governor again, runs for president, or runs for any other elected office. If she were to say, "I've had enough. I'm going to retire and ride snowmachines in the winter and fish in the summer," we would still support her.

We would also like to make clear that we are not cult followers or groupies of Sarah Palin. I can't even believe that we have to deny such a stupid accusation. But there it is. We are not part of a Sarah Palin cult. And we're not mindless "Palinbots." We've studied her record -- that's why we like her and support her. We know who she is.

Some of you may be wondering what our numerous references to "bagels" are all about.

Our motto "Buy your own damn bagels!" dates back to an Associated Press article from January 30, 2009, in which Rep. David Guttenberg (D-Fairbanks) lamented:

"There were days when she walked around the building with (her daughter) Piper handing out bagels. I think those days are gone," he added with a touch of wistfulness.

"Buy your own damn bagels!" has become our shorthand for: "Man up! Grow up! Stop whining. Stop being an ankle-biter. Stop being a big-spending taxpayer mooch. Sarah Palin is the governor of your state, not your mother."

Gov. Palin has been playing mommy to these annoying legislative children from the moment she took office. In one of her first meetings with legislators, she told them: "All of you here need some Adult Supervision." She once told Charlie Rose's green room crew that her job as governor is a lot like baby-sitting. These silly legislators wondered aloud why she wasn't as "sparky" as she once was. As I wrote at the time:

Between the ankle-biting Falafel Lady charging her staff with ethics violations, Keith Olbermann's twin trying to get her job, the View hags harping on her, David Letterman hitting on her, her son in a war zone, a special needs baby, her local church burned by an arsonist, Dan Fagan getting Levi Johnston fired, Levi Johnston's mother under arrest, a volcano about to erupt in Anchorage, Dem dingbats still moaning about Troopergate, the economy in recession, and the hopes and dreams of the conservative movement and the future of our free market system resting on her shoulders... I can't imagine why she would be tense these days?

"Buy your own damn bagels!" applies to all of us, not just the AK legislators. It means: "Pull your own weight and take responsibility. Be a part of the solution, instead of always whining about the problem."

I should also clarify the term "Ordinary Barbarian."

Let me repeat what I wrote way back in January when I coined the term:

All of you know how much I admire Robert Stacy McCain's discourse on "Ordinary Americans." As an homage to RSM, I shall dub us "ordinary barbarians" -- unlike those "Barbaric!" barbarians in Washington, DC.

We're the average slobs and working stiffs on Wall Street and Main Street and Sunset and Wilshire -- and even on Madison Avenue. We're "harmless loveable little fuzzballs."

We are the Joe-Six Packs and John Does of every race and creed. And as the old Capra film declared, "We are the hope of the world":

We are the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth. You'll find us everywhere. We raise the crops; we dig the mines, work the factories, keep the books, fly the planes and drive the buses. And when a cop yells: "Stand back there, you!" He means us, the John Does!

Frank Capra described us in his film "Meet John Doe" in 1941, and Sarah Palin spoke for us in her stump speeches in 2008:

All you've ever asked for is a good job in your own hometown, and for your government to be on your side and not in your way.

The term barbarian was used by the ancient Greeks to mean anyone who was non-Greek and spoke a strange language. Sure, they meant it as a pejorative, but there is nothing forbidding the melioration of this term for our purposes.

I think you can understand why I describe us as "ordinary." RSM describes the "Ordinary American" as "the non-elite majority":

Among other things, the Ordinary American's political desires are quite ordinary -- peace, prosperity, a stable community that is not constantly whipsawed by political controversy and ideological crusades.

Sarah Palin understands ordinary Americans. She understands ordinary people because, as she said in her Lincoln Day speech, "I think I'm the epitome of ordinary people." She is.

Now you might ask why I chose the term "barbarian" to describe us. In part, it had to do with a somewhat juvenile inside joke about a ridiculous YouTube video of the former KKK member and life-long Democrat Senator Robert Byrd howling the word "barbaric!" at the top of his lungs. For weeks after seeing that video JR and I would send each other one word text messages: "BARBARIC!" It came to represent the absurdity of Washington, DC. Mocking DC was our way of redirecting the sadness and helplessness we felt at being disenfranchised from the powers that be.

There was another reason why I chose the word "barbarian." It was because the powers that be viewed the ordinary people who attended Palin rallies as uncouth savages, dummies, hicks, and smelly blue collar people in carhartts who had never heard of Reinhold Niebuhr. The same idiot who praised Obama for reading Niebuhr called Sarah Palin "a fatal cancer." He was calling us a fatal cancer too.

The thing about barbarians is that they were not really savages. They were all civilized eventually. Benedict of Nursia saw to it. The barbarians of Europe became the poets, artists, scholars and statesmen of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

I took the contempt that the "elites" showed for ordinary Americans, and I embraced their pejorative. If they want to think of us as barbarians, fine. We'll call ourselves barbarians. Only keep in mind that the barbarians eventually won. They were tamed of their own accord. They were never conquered.

We are civilized on this website, but still untamed (we haven't even decided on how we want our name to be display -- Conservatives4Palin, Conservatives 4 Palin, Conservatives For Palin, etc.). Part of the reason why C4P is exciting for all of you (and perhaps worrying for the "suits" at SarahPAC) is that we are not "official" -- we're just ordinary citizen bloggers. We are free to say the unvarnished truth -- such as "Jay Ramras is a lying sexist hypocritical jerk." Meg Stapleton can't say that (though I would venture to guess that she's perhaps thought it once or twice). We can say it and we will and we'll back our assertions with research from the public record.

Ramras is squealing now because we're onto him. We'll keep the pressure on. And we'll need all of your help to do it. This is what citizen activism and involvement is all about. The Palin Revolution starts with us. We'll take back this country by going after one crooked scumbag and jerk politician at time.

We don't take any directives from Sarah Palin. We don't need to. We've studied her record extensively, and we've come to identify with her almost instinctively because we know that she's one of us. We don't need "directives" from her any more than we would need directives from our own sister. We know our sister. And we would fight for our sister and defend her against unfair attacks, just as we will fight for "Sister Sarah." We don't have to agree with her on everything. We disagree with family members all the time. But we stick up for family members when they're being treated unfairly.

Jay Ramras relentlessly and unfairly attacks our sister. We're not going to take it anymore.

You attack her, Jay, and you can expect a barbarian horde at your gates!

We promise to treat you as fairly as you treat her. It's as simple as that.

We expect that people will accuse us of being bullies or some such nonsense. What they really mean is that we are effective.

No honest and fair-minded politician has anything to fear from us. We have a great sense of fair play. We believe in the Golden Rule. And we will apply it here.

We're barbarians, but we're not barbaric.

We do, however, like to pick a fight every now and then -- just to show the real bullies that we're not afraid of them...