If there is a lesson to be learned in Election ’08 from the Republican side of things, it is how elitist Republicans will continue to eat their own young--even during an election campaign with a mainstream media keeping its coverage one-sided.
Here in Canada, where the Toronto Star and the National Post seem to be in a competition over who’s more Obama, Canadians are being, well …Canadian.
If Obama were running in Canada, as conventional wisdom goes, Obama would go in on a landslide.
Problem is Obama is not running in Canada but in a no-hard-questions-balance-bereft mainstream media, for what is shaping up to be a United States of Socialist America!
The dander raised in Election ’08 is truly precedent setting.
A column appearing under Danielle Crittenden’s byline in today’s National Post reminds me of how people on both sides are losing all perspective.
First of all, Dani is a big part of my former Toronto Sun days. I admired her then and do to this very day.
That aside, Dani is out to lunch on today’s 11th-hour, National Post anti-Palin piece.
“I hate to pull rank here. But it seems I am the only Republican still standing who can criticize Sarah Palin without being accused by my fellow conservatives of suffering from an “elite education,” she writes.
“Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker and (my husband) David Frum have all had their heads put on pikes by the self-appointed rulers of conservatism. As Rush Limbaugh said:
“These are the people who are embarrassed by Sara Palin ‘cause she’s not an intellectual and she didn’t go to Harvard or have a college degree from approved universities and she drops her g’s from words like morning and says mornin’. She’s embarrassing and I think something else really bothering these people is that they believe that she may become one of the key leaders of the conservative movement beyond 2008 if she and McCain lose this.”
Dani writes, “Those with degrees from approved universities are capable of mounting their own defence. But what about those of us who did not go to Harvard—and yet whose eyes still bug out at the prospect of a Palin vice-presidency, let alone the prospect of her as a “key leader” in the future?
She then goes on to describe how she had no education to speak of herself, not beyond high school, how she grew up in a newspaper family and was eager to join the business.
Something I know about, having seen her in action in long ago days in the Toronto Sun newsroom.
According to Dani, “It’s as plain as day that Palin is “unfit” for the job she’s running for. (Shouldn’t that more correctly be in Dani Crittenden’s opinion?) “We wouldn’t expect the best darn regional car saleswoman to be appointed the next vice-president of General Motors. We wouldn’t fly in a commercial plane piloted by someone with a Cessna licence because we trusted her gut. We wouldn’t follow a woman into battle because she’s a crack shot at moose hunting.
Why is it unreasonable to have expected a better choice from our party for the next potential leader of the free world?” (Italics, mine).
It is “unreasonable”, Dani because none of you is bigger than your hasn’t-been-doing-so-well-lately Republican Party.
How many Democrats are seriously angry with their party for passing Hillary over for what must be the most inexperienced presidential candidate in history?
Their Party too, decided they were bigger than them.
And, in my books you don’t have to be a Harvard graduate, or have any education of which to speak to a Republican Party elitist.
“Those of us who came of age as Reagan Republicans expected more from ourselves. Leave the left to its demagoguery and name-calling. We’ll make the case using facts, reason –and yes, common sense”, Dani concludes.
“Now it seems my side are the ones circling the wagons, shouting abuse at dissenters—determined to lose rather than ask ourselves why we aren’t winning.”
In the one-sided mainstream media presentation of Election ’08, it has been both sides shouting abuse at dissenters, and both sides not questioning themselves about how America now stands on the precipice of the well-trodden road to socialism.
Meanwhile, the elitists of two political stripes seem to forget that the lives of average Americans hang in the balance.
And as for Rush being one of the “self-appointed rulers of conservatism”, he has something important backing him up—the non-elitist people who made him numero uno in contemporary America talk show radio.
It ain't elitist to be anti-Palin
Judi McLeod——
Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
