Sarah Palin: GOP Scapegoat

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Sometimes, I get ideas for articles, and jot some quick notes down because I am not in a position to write out the articles, but I don't want to forget the idea.  Then, the notes, when I get home, get placed on a stack on the left side of my desk.  Sometimes I use those notes, and sometimes some of them remain on that stack, until much later, possibly years later, I find those notes again.

The following was inspired by one of those old notes.

Sarah Palin: GOP Scapegoat

I keep hearing news that Sarah Palin is being blamed for the GOP loss in Election '08, but it is not just the democrats that are criticizing her!  The moderate republican establishment leadership is essentially throwing this great lady under the bus.

The economy was a large factor in this election and the GOP refused to hammer the advantages of fiscal conservatism.  Obama got to the point that he was beginning to sound more fiscally conservative than John McCain.

Sarah Palin did not hurt the GOP ticket.  In fact, I believe she helped it.  Without Sarah Palin, the conservative base, or at least portions of it, wouldn't have been energized.  She was drawing crowds larger than John McCain, for God's Sake.

Some would argue that this line of reasoning that conservatism is the recipe for a GOP win is patently false, and that McCain actually lost because he wasn't liberal enough.  This, of course, is a line of pure poppy-cock.

Proposition 8 in California, the proposed state constitution amendment defining marriage between a man and a women, won in California, a State that is totally in the tank for Barack Obama.  Is that how a nation leaning left votes?

Palin was attacked precisely because she is conservative, and the left knows what it fears.  The GOP will keep losing elections until it puts conservatives on the ballot, be it mid-terms, or presidential.  That is just a reality.  Conservatives, if they articulate that conservatism and know how to stand up to the Left, win by landslides, turn governments around, and withstand the attacks.  Otherwise, the Republican Party will continue to lose.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary