Palin and the "Intellectuals" (or at least some of them)

What is it with Palin and these conservative intellectuals? Usually smart people are reduced to blathering buffoons when it comes to discussing the woman they love to hate. Actually, make that just 'hate'. How else to explain the high pitched scream that is today's edition of Peggy Noonan's WSJ column ('A Farewell to Harms')?

I have to admit that I always thought that to make it as an intellectual, you had to make sure you applied the old rules of logic. You know, things like 'if you assert something, you have to have facts to back it up', or 'if you attribute a statement to a person, you've got to be pretty darned sure they actually said it'. But apparently for an intellectual superstar like Noonan, these rules don't apply. Which means she doesn't actually have to know the governor, let alone speak to her, before making statements like 'Palin doesn't read anything' and seems 'proud of it'. The fact that Palin describes herself as a 'voracious reader' would perhaps suggest otherwise, but hey: facts are for suckers, right? Noonan is an Olympian, she doesn't need facts to tell her that Palin is 'bad for the republic'.

Same goes for Peter Wehner over at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "Her public appearances have generally ranged from mediocre to awful," he asserts. Would that be 'public appearance' as in 'the second most watched debate in the history of televised presidential debates'? You know, the one about which one Peggy Noonan summed up Palin's performance with the words 'She killed'? 'She killed', is that somewhere between mediocre and awful? Or was he just making it up because he wanted to give an added sense of urgency to his claim that Palin is 'terribly out of sync with the needs of this moment' - whatever that may mean?

Now, these are people who have given many years of service to the conservative cause, so we should be willing to cut them some slack. If they want to have a go at a bit of logic-free, fact-free ranting, they should be allowed to do so.

By why, why, why, point their arrows at one of their own - even if they don't like her, even if they believe she doesn't read books and is proud of it, even if they think she's 'terribly out of sync with the needs of this moment'?

There's a man in the White House right now whose stated ambition it is to dismantle the entire conservative legacy of the Reagan-Gingrich period, but instead of focusing their efforts on fighting him to a standstill, they are so self-obsessed that they'd rather waste their time fighting their internal enemies. Even if they're desperate to stop her from winning the Republican nomination, can't they at least have the decency to wait until the start of the primaries before having a go at her? Wouldn't it be better for their party and the republic they claim to care about so deeply if they actually joined forces with her - and Romney, and Huckabee, and whoever else wants to join - and fight the fight that really needs to be fought?

I mean, are they for real?

To quote the great John McEnroe: they can not be serious!

UPDATE by Tim: Time for a Peggy Noonan flashback...her famous off-mike "it's over" and "bulls--t" comments made immediately after Palin was nominated to the VP ticket:



Mike Murphy, former Romney aide and Noonan's partner in crime in the above segment, also came out with a Palin hit piece recently. Peggy Noonan never gave Palin a chance, and everything she has said or written about Palin in the last months is an attempt to justify the ill-considered remarks she made above.