Claude Sandroff: Sarah Palin and the Low Ebb of the Cultural Left

Claude Sandroff has written an excellent and thoughtful article for the American Thinker. Here are some excerpts:

Starting with a broad ranging, 5,000-plus word Facebook Note, then her recent Hong Kong address to an international investment group, and in more detail in "Going Rogue," she explains again and again that the very essence of "common sense conservatism" is a recognition of the limits placed on the mutability of human nature. Government can do only so much. We have to figure out, as best we can, how to muddle through the rest.

But recognizing the tragic human condition is not synonymous with despair. And as we roam about the American political landscape, and meet up with the controlling pessimism of Obama, Reid, Pelosi -- and their crass, partisan underlings and vicious media enablers-- something becomes immediately apparent: where Palin goes people are usually happy.

[...]

One of the great challenges when writing about Palin is to keep focus on her concrete accomplishments (the energy related legislative agenda she advanced and passed were masterful), while avoiding the traps set by the those intent on reducing her to a mere social firebrand. It is ever the goal of the "elitist loons", a phrase used by Palin to describe John Kerry, to so stigmatize her. Whether by printing an overtly sexist image of her on the cover of Newsweek or by David Brooks insisting that she remains a "joke," the overt goal is to ridicule her beyond redemption.

But Sarah Palin's extraordinary career trajectory, the American life that led from holding moose eyeballs for her father after a morning hunt to Vice-Presidential candidate is not so easily dismissed.

[...]

Unlike many women in the liberal political and media firmament, whose success is based on the pull from powerful fathers or husbands, Palin's success is as self-made as any American in political history. That she could build this career in the harsh, male-dominated frontier culture of Alaska is even more astounding.

Everything Palin accomplished was achieved without inherited money, position, or political connections. Being self-made is something the likes of Sally Quinn could never claim. That Palin is an irresistible media ratings magnet, beautiful, unapologetic and, unabashedly conservative and Christian, just adds to the liberal animus. The attacks of the vipers can get only worse as Palin adds personal wealth to her resume, especially since she will have earned it by selling more books than all of her detractors combined.

Read Sandroff's entire article here. It's excellent.