I posted a couple weeks ago about the attempt by disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters to challenge Barack Obama’s citizenship status, or something (I never was quite clear on what exactly they thought they were going to prove), and my amazement at how crazy some folks get about politics these days; but what’s going on now as certain elements on the Left try to destroy Sarah Palin (there’s no other word for it) far exceeds that for sheer malignant looniness.The craziest, and ugliest, is the attempt by denizens of the Democratic Underground (way underground, folks, with this one) and Daily Kos to claim that Trig Palin isn’t the governor’s son, but in fact her grandson, and that she faked her own pregnancy to cover up her daughter’s. Their evidence? Gov. Palin didn’t show much (as some women don’t), and her daughter Bristol was out of school with mono and looked a little chubbier. That’s it. The funny thing about this attempt at political assassination is that previously, Palin-haters have criticized her for putting politics ahead of the life of her son, traveling too late into her pregnancy—her water actually broke when she was in Dallas for a governor’s conference, and she didn’t immediately go to the hospital, but instead flew back to Anchorage; now, those who want to tear her down are forced to argue that she faked the whole episode. Which is crazy, because if in fact her pregnancy was a charade, what would adding to the charade accomplish except to create a whole new set of doctors who could testify that she wasn’t pregnant? The whole thing is completely nuts; it will be a sad day in American politics if Gov. Palin is forced to release her medical records to disprove it.Next to that, the garden-variety sexism of CNN reporter John Roberts seems almost wholesome. In case you missed that story, he was the one who wondered on air if it was irresponsible of Gov. Palin to run for Vice President when she has an infant with Down Syndrome. The question clearly floored his colleague, Dana Bash; in reply, she raised an important question: “I guess—my guess is that, perhaps, the line inside the McCain campaign would be, if it were a man being picked who also had a baby, but—you know, four months ago with Down’s Syndrome, would you ask the same question?” Somehow, I don’t think so.Driving this, I think, is rage that the GOP (in the person of John McCain) had the sheer gall to pick a VP nominee who’s a woman who’s off the (Democratic) reservation. I heard some of that even in Rebecca Traister’s piece in Salon, and I’ve heard a fair bit more elsewhere. We’re seeing, I think, the true heart of a lot of liberal feminism. It doesn’t matter to them that she’s a woman with a chance to make history; if anything, that makes it worse—she’s not just a normal infidel, she’s an apostate and a traitor, and so must be destroyed. The fact that someone would actually write this (on DU, quoted here) sums it up:

I will attack her for whatever reason suits the purpose of making her look bad to my audience.When I am among secular people I will attack her for being a religious zealot. When I am among people from church, I will attack her for being of a heterodox denomination. When I am among liberals I will attack her for her conservative views. When I am among conservatives I will attack her for her for anything they are prove to view as shortcomings in ideology. When I am among women, I will deride the obvious pandering of her nomination and the fact that McCain must not think much of womens’ [sic] intelligence, when I am among conservative men who dislike women in authority, I will rub their noses in it.If I can attack her for opposite reasons over the course of an afternoon, I will consider it an accomplishment.Same goes for Johnny Boy.

That’s hatred—flat out, pure, triple-distilled, 200 proof, weapons-grade hatred. That’s ugly.

There are a lot of folks raising the concern with Gov. Palin that, as a newcomer to national politics, she’s likely to make mistakes, and if she does, she’ll be hammered for them by the liberal media and end up a drag on the ticket. Jonah Goldberg put it this way:

I’ve been thinking about it and I think the bottom line on Palin is pretty simple. If she does a good job at the convention and survives about three weeks of serious media scrutiny—no horrible gaffes, no unforgivable I-don’t-knows to gotchya questions (fair and unfair), no botched hostile interviews—she will emerge as the single most inspired VP pick in modern memory and she will give the Democrats migraines for a long time to come, assuming there are no terrible skeletons we don’t know about. But, if she screws up in the next three weeks, gives the press and the late night comedians sufficient fodder to Quayelize her, she’ll be seen as anything from a liability to an outright horrible pick. That’s it.

For my part, I’d been agreeing with this analysis—confident that Gov. Palin will do well, but still in agreement with the consequences if she doesn’t. Now, however, I’m not so sure. Think about it: why did Dan Quayle get Quayled? George W. Bush didn’t see a similar media reaction bury him, and he and the English language have a considerably tenser relationship. I think the answer is that it wasn’t only Democrats who thought Quayle was a lightweight and not worthy of his position: Republicans didn’t either. When Bentsen hit him with the “you’re no Jack Kennedy” right cross and he went down for the count, his own party believed he belonged on the mat. That’s what was fatal to him. With W., that didn’t happen, and so he won two terms in the White House even as every comedian in the nation painted him as an ape in a dunce cap who couldn’t spell his own name if you spotted him the “B”and the “u.”This is, I think, relevant to our evaluation of Sarah Palin. Consider that unlike Sen. Quayle, she has evoked a deep and impassioned positive response from national Republicans; Jonah Goldberg (again) is representative on this:

Whatever else you want to say about Palin, the undeniable fact is that she has generated staggering enthusiasm among Republicans. Every few minutes I get another email like this:

Jonah,
Three days ago, I was telling my fiance that I might stay home in November. I could never vote for Obama, and there were things McCain could do (such as a VP pick) that would prevent me from voting for him.Well, I did it. Today I made my first ever political contribution, and it was to the McCain-PALIN campaign. I’m sold on Palin. And since he picked her, I’m now sold on McCain too.Sincerely,
[name withheld]

This is profoundly significant, because it means that if she does put her foot in it and give the media the opportunity to label her a lightweight, out of her depth—I’ll be surprised if she does, but even the best of us do it at the worst of times—Republican voters aren’t going to buy the line. Instead, we’ll defend her against it to anyone who will listen, and some people will. Would a gaffe or two on her part deflate the campaign somewhat? Sure, just as Sen. Obama’s have deflated his somewhat. As long as she keeps her cool, though, I just don’t see it knocking her or the ticket as a whole off their stride.

Well, things have calmed down considerably since yesterday’s spike (more hits in one day than I’ve ever had in a month; from what I can see, this was pretty common among pro-Palin sites, as the Net went crazy with people trying to find out who the heck is Gov. Sarah Palin), but the traffic is still running pretty high; and there seem to be two real themes here. First, people looking for dirt on Gov. Palin. Sorry, nothing there but the accusation that she abused the powers of her office in an attempt to get someone to fire her brother-in-law the child-tasering state trooper who drinks beer in his police car and threatened to kill her father—an accusation which a) doesn’t seem like much of an accusation (actually, getting the guy fired sounds like a pretty good idea to me), but b) doesn’t seem to be true anyway.Second, I continue to have crowds of folks land here searching for info on Sarah Palin’s church, religion, and the like: and for you, I now have an answer. Go here, scroll down to the seventh line, and you will know what churches Sarah Palin attends, or has attended.

The best media piece I’ve yet read on the Palin pick is Michael Medved’s. For the most part, he makes the same points that those of us who’ve been agitating for Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket have been making for a while, but what really makes his analysis, I think, is this comment:

Yes, this undermines McCain’s future use of the experience issue, but that’s almost certainly a good thing, too. The experience issue has never worked well in presidential elections: Gerald Ford tried it against a one-term Governor of Georgia (the worthless Jimmy Carter) and lost; Carter tried it against Reagan (no foreign policy experience as Governor of California!) and got wiped out; George H.W. Bush tried to make it stick against Bill Clinton and the result was the lowest percentage of the vote for a Republican candidate since Wiliam Howard Taft. The line McCain’s been using “He’s Not Ready to Lead” is still viable—and should emphasize a discussion of Obama’s policies, not his job history—his radicalism, not his resume. Meanwhile, we should invite comparisons of Governor Palin’s experience with Obama’s: won’t the PTA connect more with middle class voters than “community organizer,” and property tax-cutting small town mayor count more than slippery State Senator who voted “present” a disquieting proportion of the time. In any event, both tickets now balance experience with youthful energy—but McCain is balancing it the right way, with the experience at the top.

I think this is right on target, for two reasons. In the first place, every Democratic soundbite against Gov. Palin on the experience issue is also a soundbite against Barack Obama. Charles Schumer, for instance, said this: “While Palin is a fine person, her lack of experience makes the thought of her assuming the presidency troubling.” OK, Senator, so riddle me this: doesn’t that mean that Sen. Obama’s lack of experience makes the thought of him assuming the presidency troubling? After all, Gov. Palin has considerably more governance experience (technically, infinitely more, since Sen. Obama has none), and a considerably longer list of achievements to her name; how is it that her lack of experience troubles you, and his lack doesn’t? Check this out (HT: Carlos Echevarria):

Or, the thought strikes: does Sen. Schumer really mean (consciously or otherwise), “don’t worry about Sen. Obama’s inexperience—he’s just out front running the campaign; when it gets down to brass tacks, it will really be Uncle Joe running the show”? Is this a Freudian slip here? I’ve suspected for a while that that’s how the Democratic leadership on the Hill sees Sen. Obama; have we just seen that confirmed?In any case, going back to Medved’s point, prior to Steve Schmidt taking over to run the McCain effort, I remember seeing quizzical headlines asking, “Why is John McCain re-running the Hillary campaign,” pointing out as Medved does that running on “experience” doesn’t work well when your opponent is running on “hope” and “change.” The danger always was that Sen. McCain would lean on that too heavily—and now the presence of Gov. Palin on that ticket both makes that impossible and pulls the campaign back to a hope/change/reform emphasis of its own. The key now is to make the case that John McCain and Sarah Palin are experienced reformers who will put country first, working for the common good, serving the people above all. That, I think, is a message that works for them, since it fits what they’ve done in their careers, and what they care about as individuals; it’s a message they can back up from their own stories and their accomplishments in life; and it’s one that can win in November.

Beldar has a great post up on why Gov. Palin won’t be Quayled by Joe Biden which, along the way, captures a lot of why those of us who’ve been backing her believe in her.

This still revs me up whenever I think about it—we did it. The longest of longshots happened. John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate—and for today at least, she blew the roof off the place. If you didn’t see Sen. McCain’s introduction and Gov. Palin’s speech (which, judging by what I can see of his reactions, took him by surprise, it was so good) in Dayton this afternoon, the video is below (it’s about 27 minutes).“A ship in harbor is safe—but that’s not why it is built.” —Gov. Sarah Palin

The bloggers over at PowerLine are quite negative on the Palin pick. Paul Mirengoff wrote, “I’m very disappointed that John McCain would put someone as inexperienced and lacking in foreign policy and national security background as Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.” Why, because Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney have so much foreign-policy experience? Guys, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s kinda this big honkin’ landmass in between Alaska and the rest of the US—it’s called Canada, and it’s a foreign country, and it’s one of Alaska’s only two neighbors. The other is a little country called Russia (I think you might have heard of it). I don’t say that Gov. Palin is accustomed to going toe-to-toe with hostile foreign leaders, certainly, but then, it’s not like she’s Mike Huckabee‘s running mate; she’ll be understudying a guy who knows the field pretty well, and she’s a quick study. Trust Sen. McCain to bring her along on that score.Now, could we have done better in that regard from the GOP field? Sure. Six months ago, I wanted Condoleeza Rice on the ticket; you could also have picked someone like Richard Lugar. But you guys aren’t boosting anyone like that—you want a governor, and there are good reasons it should be so. If you get a governor, though, you’re not going to get much in the way of foreign-policy experience. (And incidentally, how much foreign-policy experience did Gov. Reagan have when he was elected 28 years ago, anyway?) In all honesty, I’m not sure how much that matters; it’s not Barack Obama’s foreign-policy inexperience that worries me, it’s his judgment. Where I think experience matters is in the practical details of governing, and having a sense for what works and what doesn’t; and there, though Gov. Palin doesn’t have long experience, she has highly successful experience, having accomplished quite a bit in a difficult political environment, working against her own party’s political machine. Where her inexperience abroad matters is in that sense of what’s possible and reasonable, and though she doesn’t have that, she can develop it.And honestly, given Secretary Rice’s track record over the last couple years, I think I might just prefer inexperience. (For whatever it might be worth, Johnathan Adler thinks much the same.)

as the Democrats try to neutralize the Palin pick. Charles Schumer is already claiming she takes the experience argument against Obama off the table, other Democrats are warning (in appropriately sepulchral tones) that she might be “a disaster”—one even dismissed her as “Geraldine Quayle.” For the latter, I think once America gets its first good look at Sarah Palin, I don’t think anyone will buy that; she’s bright, capable, and a quick study. What’s more, it isn’t quite true that she has no foreign-policy experience—remember, Alaska doesn’t border the US, it borders Canada and Russia. She certainly doesn’t measure up to Joe Biden in that respect, but that’s what the GOP ticket has John McCain for. And with all due respect, Sen. Schumer: don’t just look at the calendar, look at the accomplishments. That’s where the experience differential between Gov. Palin and Sen. Obama is very real.To go one step further, I think the Democrats are making a major mistake here. They’re trying to neutralize her with ridicule as a lightweight, hoping for the quick wipeout right out of the box, instead of treating her seriously; and while that would work if she were a lightweight, she isn’t, and she’s faced worse before. What this means is that, when she comes to the debate with Joe Biden, the expectations for her will be low, because after all, Sen. Biden is a vicious this, that and the other thing—and as George W. Bush found, she will find that low expectations can be a real help. She won’t need to “win” the debate with Sen. Biden to win the debate: all she’ll need to do is look respectable and not make a fool of herself, and the Democratic attack on her will go down like a house of cards. If in fact she stands up to Sen. Biden and performs well—as I’m convinced she will if the campaign staff prepare her properly—then the attacks on her will backfire in a big way. And if Sen. Biden has one of his “Uncle Joe” moments and she handles it well, she could flip him clean off the stage.