By now you have probably seen the wave of Sarah Palin rumors in the dinosaur media and the liberal blogs’ focus on the story that Sarah Palin and husband Todd are headed for divorce because of extramarital affairs by both. As you may imagine, the rumor was like a dream come true for many lefty bloggers.
PJM’s own Rick Moran looks at this issue at American Thinker and raises a great point:
Several Alaska bloggers hounded the former Alaskan governor with bogus ethics complaints while she was in office — Alaska Report being one of them. Could a little payback be at play here?
I don’t doubt there are serious motivations for such tactics, but I suspect it runs a bit deeper than payback. Moran openly admits he’s being highly speculative. In that same spirit, here are a few thoughts and ideas.
Look at the “name in the paper” syndrome that followed Palin resigning her office and the stir that caused on the left. Not only did she reinforce her name recognition with that move with publicity you couldn’t buy from the dinosaur media at any price, but the press attacks on her actually brought out a lot of sympathy from grassroots types who don’t like and don’t trust the dinosaur media anyway.
I am beginning to think Palin played the press for fools on that one. All an accident? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Think of it in the following way. What could she have possibly done by plan or accident to get more press, more name recognition, and more favorable polling reactions from voters than resign as governor? That degree of success smacks to me of planning.
Her position thus reinforced with grassroots Republicans, the left took up the call on this “divorce” rumor, apparently wanting desperately to take a little of her momentum away. In so doing, the left apparently found the answer for Palin and her people to the question of what might give her even greater name recognition and voter sympathy. The beauty is, she didn’t even have to lift a finger this time around. All she had to do was to answer the rumor with:
Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!
Boom. Up go the polling numbers yet again, with minimal effort on Palin’s part. I think the woman is pure gold on these things. One simply cannot extinguish a rumor with any greater force, save perhaps dropping a nuke on the house of the author of the rumor. We see once again that the chief rumor monger is Alaskan CNN stringer Dennis Zaki of the Alaska Report website Moran mentions. Zaki and his website, you may recall, were involved in the spread of some seriously vicious rumors about Trig Palin and his parentage — rumors some on the left have been fixated on since the Republican convention.
In fact, Zaki has been on the attack for years, with anything and everything that sounds even remotely plausible. The problem is, the divorce fiction being reported as fact is hardly unique. It’s merely the latest in a long line of such nonsense. You’d think places like CNN would stop using sources like Zaki.
It’s really enough to cause one to wonder a little about the sanity of Palin’s opposition. If Palin really is the idiot they keep making her out to be, why is it they feel they must make stuff up to generate attacks on her?
And let’s face it, the record of success of such attacks isn’t very good. Foul rumors gets quelled with lead-pipe certainty every single time. You would think that eventually they’d stop trying after so many failures. If she’s so much the idiot, what does it say about her attackers when they come away bloodied and broken after each attack attempt? Do you suppose it’s possible they’re desperate now and are tossing anything and everything at the wall hoping that something will eventually stick?
Hate will make people do strange and desperate things, and trust me, a fair amount of Palin’s attackers hate her.
Meanwhile, we sit and watch as those stories about Democratic corruption, elections violations, and malfeasance get ignored outright.
It seems to me that this goes directly to motivation. Political motivation. They know very well indeed that the woman spells trouble for the Democrats going into 2010 and 2012.
As to why Palin is the target of such attacks, it’s because she’s the one who has the support of the GOP rank and file. Thus, she is the one who poses the biggest threat to the Democrats.
And if you’re in shark-infested waters, you tend to attack the shark closest to you.
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