Sarah's Smackdown

"If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, No. 10.

I've been chewing the data of the various polls that have appeared since Gov. Palin's surprise announcement on July the 3rd. Two facts stand out:

1. Contrary to the received opinion of the political class, Gov. Palin's resignation hasn't done any harm to her national approval ratings. On the contrary, she seems to have become more popular since her resignation statement, and this increase in popularity isn't just limited to Southern conservative Republicans. She's more popular with Republicans as well as Democrats and independents, conservatives as well as moderates, men as well as women, White as well as Hispanic voters, North-Eastern and Mid-Western voters as well as Soutern and Western ones (the only two electoral subgroups where she seems to have lost some ground since July 3rd are African-American voters and the over-65s).

2. One one particular issue, she gets overwhelming backing (53-28 in the recent Gallup poll), namely her criticism of the media's coverage of her and her family.

I'm wondering if these two facts aren't somehow related. After all, if people have made up their minds about the media's lack of credibility when it comes to coverage of Gov. Palin (and her family), any further criticism of her actions by that same media is likely to have the opposite effect of the one intended. It would explain why, in spite of a barrage of MSM criticism in the days immediately following her announcement, Gov. Palin's ratings went up rather than down.

It's only a hypothesis, of course, but it seems a plausible one. It would also help to explain this blogpost by two female authors based in, believe it or not, Hollywood and New York City. The authors make it clear that they don't agree with all of Gov. Palin's views, but that's not their reason for writing this post. Their fire is focused exclusively on the media and the feminist punditocracy:

Personally, the whole matter has left me feeling a little like I did at the end of seventh grade, after a year spent passively watching bullies ostracize and pick on one of the only black girls in the school: sick, and embarrassed for us all. As women and mothers, we should be particularly ashamed of ourselves. Women who have participated in this smear-fest have reinforced every nasty stereotype of female bitchiness and cattiness at its worst. Whatever your passionate opinions, whatever your disagreements with her views, this woman and her family were savaged in a manner that went beyond any reasonable standard. She is a public figure, but her husband and children are not.
(...)
Then there is the matter of how the media treated Mrs. Palin's family, especially her children. How sad that normal people may no longer wish to run for or hold public office due to this horrific sort of exposure, including abuse of their children.
(...)
Am I alone in feeling that ridicule of a disabled infant, and rape threats, represent a new low? How intensely cruel and hypocritical this behavior was, coming from "feminists" and "progressives" who probably don't realize how many conservatives they are helping to create, as anyone with a moral compass is likely to figure that, if that's how liberals argue, maybe I'll consider conservative ideas, thanks. No matter how strongly you disagree with Mrs. Palin, this type of behavior is simply inexcusable.

Maybe the MSM have been pushing their lines of attack against the Governor for so long that they inadvertently pushed them past Alinsky's tipping point.