Addressing the Critics: Palin is an Honest Fighter and She Knows How to Pick Her Battles

I am weary of this, friends. But this absurd Washington Post article must be fisked.

Just look at this sentence:

Many complaints against Palin have been dismissed, a few are still pending, and several resulted in critical findings.

Several? What the hell are they talking about? They were all dismissed. One was settled with no finding of any ethics violation or any wrong doing. Several? That’s a damn lie.

And look at this:

Palin was accused of improperly billing the state for per diem expenses while she stayed at the family home in Wasilla. She was ordered to pay back taxes but has not disclosed the amount.

It's true that Zane Henning, who has already had one frivolous complaint tossed, filed a complaint about her per diems. But the fact remains that she was entitled to collect them. She didn't collect them for her kids or her husband, though she was legally entitled to do so. And the Juneau governor's mansion was undergoing extensive repairs at the time. She collected a $60 per diem in lieu of having the state put her up in a hotel or a rented apartment (which they did for Tony Knowles and Frank Murkowski for much much more money). You find me a decent hotel room for a family of seven for $60 a day. Here's a fact no one can dispute: She spent less that her predecessors! Sarah Palin and her family cost the State of Alaska less than her predecessors.

(As a side note, people often forget that state senator Kim Elton was charging the state per diems to travel from his house in Juneau to the State Capitol in Juneau! And he charged more money for per diems than Gov. Palin did! And his per diems were only covering the regular and special legislative sessions. Gov. Palin's were for the entire year. Where's the outrage, anklebiters?)

And as for the taxes on per diems, who "ordered her" to pay them? The IRS? How in the world would the WashPo know that? And it was not a matter of wrong doing. She had no idea that the per diems were taxable. That was only discovered when tax attorneys from around the country combed through her tax returns during the election.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this WashPo article is the oft repeated canard pushed by Andree McLeod that she and Palin were once close friends and collaborators. Our own Tim Lindell exposed the stupidity of this Saint Andree nonsense. The person claiming this is Andree. The historic record does not show that Andree "made Sarah Palin." Andree is a delusional nutjob who hates Sarah Palin. The leftwingers who control most of our mainstream media hate Sarah Palin; therefore, they are willing to believe a nutjob's delusions of grandeur.

I’ve noticed that whenever this absurd claim is made, the writers quote from the same two emails that Palin apparently sent to Andree McLeod once, but they never provide context as to what these two brief email conversations were about. I write hundreds of emails every week. I'm sure I've written nice emails to crazy people. I've even said complimentary things about people who I later learned were total nut jobs.

The WashPo writers note with wistful rue that if one runs as an ethics reformer, one invariably sets oneself up to be knocked down. Well, actually, no, not necessarily. Not in a world without Alinsky.

Alinsky and his followers are the ones who will target you if you run as a reformer. Never forget Rule #4 of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”:

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

They made her live up to an impossible and nonsensical standard. They even changed the standard on her so as to keep her off balance. In the words of that great internet epigrammarian Jim Treacher, "They shot at her feet and then arrested her for violating the no dancing ordinance."

The clueless critics will ask, How will she handle the heat in DC if she can’t Juneau?

The answer is simple: The Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act doesn't exist in DC.

Here is the plain sad truth, people. If the confidentiality loop hole in the Executive Branch Ethics Act had been closed, this situation would not have existed.

Let me explain.

Alaska’s Legislative Ethics Act has a strict confidentiality provision. When you file an ethics complaint, you are not allowed to publicize it. If you do, the complaint gets thrown out automatically. This protects lawmakers from frivolous politically motivated complaints. If a frivolous complaint is filed, no one knows about it. And when it is dismissed because it is without merit, no one knows about it. Therefore, a lawmaker’s reputation is in no way tarnished by frivolous complaints.

Imagine if that same rule had applied to the complaints filed against Gov. Palin. Imagine that McLeod, Biegel, Henning, et al. were not allowed to publicize their frivolous complaints. Their stupid complaints were found to be without merit. They were dismissed. If confidentiality had been honored, then no one would have known about these complaints. There wouldn’t have been the “publicity stress” on Gov. Palin and her administration. She and her staff wouldn’t have felt the need to address these complaints publicly at all. They would have felt much more secure in the knowledge that politically motivated complaints would not harm their administration.

That wasn’t the case. Each one was publicized for maximum damage.

In Juneau, she was stymied by a legislature that made her personally the issue. They were playing politics with crucial priorities for Alaska (like the in-state natural gas bullet line) simply because they were her priorities. They made her personally the issue, and not the issues that she was actually pursuing. As a public servant who loves Alaska and wants the state to progress, she felt that the environment in Juneau was too toxic and that she could only advance the ball by passing it to Parnell.

She did not have the support of her own party, which is still led by a chairman who had to pay the largest ethics fine in the state’s history because Sarah Palin blew the whistle on his corrupt activities. The majority of the Republicans in Alaska hate her even more than the Democrats. Prior to the 2008 campaign, she had established a broad base of support in the legislature among Democrats and decent Republicans. After the election, the Democrats “went home” to their side. Perhaps they were taking marching orders from Outside. Who knows? Perhaps someday we’ll find out more.

But the AK GOP was even worse. There is no love lost between her and the still ethically challenged members of her state party. The difference between Juneau and DC is quite obvious – in DC she will have a party supporting her.

The critics will say, if she can’t take the opposition heat on a local level, how will she take it on a national level? After all these were just some inconsequential Alaskan bloggers?

Please. She is taking the heat nationally and locally. The hostility and hatred directed at her will not let up. These Palin-hating loons have sullied our political discourse, and they will no doubt continue to do so.

Sarah Palin knows that they will continue to attack her and her family. It won’t let up just because she is no longer the governor.

But if the Palins are forced to fight a never-ending battle with people who adhere to the politics of personal destruction, then it might as well be a battle of their own choosing. Sarah Palin chooses to address a larger audience and to fight the larger battle of confronting the great issues facing our nation.

The critics will claim that she is a narcissist and that she abandoned the people of Alaska.

Please. If she were truly a narcissist she would remain for another year and simply take a paycheck and enjoy all the government perks. The ethics complaints are being tossed one after another. But they are continuing to cost the state money. They are distracting her administration. She can’t get anything done because of this damn loop hole in the Executive Branch Ethics Act.

And in the meantime, the country needs her. We need a leader of the opposition.

She has achieved a position of national prominence, and the nation needs her to provide a message of fiscal sanity and a return to constitutionally proscribe limited government. These are the times for a bold new voice. We need Sarah Palin.

The political rules afforded to other politicians were never afforded to Sarah Palin.

By any objective standard her term as governor has been a resounding success.

She made real progress for the first time in over 30 years in getting a natural gas pipeline built. She increased her state’s revenue by instituting ACES, which encourages development. She reduced government spending and dramatically reduced her state’s federal earmark requests in order to encourage her state to be more self-reliant and less dependent on federal government. She even spent less in her own personal expenses than prior administrations. She fulfilled every promise she made when she campaigned for governor -- every one of them.

These are successes that any politician would dream of having, and yet few are willing to give Sarah Palin credit for these achievements.

Her children are attacked though other politicians’ children are off limits.

The rules of the game, as established by others, don’t seem to apply to her. So she decided to change the rules. She has now established her own rules. She is operating on her own terms, and she will take her message to the people of this country who are eager to find a way forward from a government that is incompetent in addressing the challenges facing our nation.

In this WashPo article she said:

I will take the battle nationally and I won't shy away from challenging the powerful, the entrenched, the corrupt and anyone standing in the way of getting our country back on the right track.

We've got your back, Guv. Raise the banner high. We'll rally!