She was called a rock star. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Sarah Palin supporters filled McCain-Palin campaign offices across the land and attended her rallies in droves. But the campaign loss left her standing on stage with tears in her eyes and her followers helplessly bitter and angry over the way the mainstream media treated her and how the left brutally smeared her. How things have changed since then.
While there will always be a lingering bad taste in the mouths of Palin supporters, the Palin army is far from helpless today. In fact, they have become a strong political force to be reckoned with. Recently, the Palin army
slammed Mitt Romney supporters into submission with a response to
anonymous attacks on Palin prompting the GOP presidential hopeful to take to
Twitter to call his anonymous aids "numbskulls."
The reason why the Palin camp has honed it's skills so effectively that it can act as a lightning fast response team in a situation like this with surgical precision is that combatting the lying lamestream media has turned them into a swift and effective rhetorical fighting force that can eviscerate anyone who says anything about Sarah Palin that cannot be backed up with facts or proper motive. You can thank the mainstream media, the left and the liberal Alaska bloggers - who continued the beatings of her even after the 2008 election campaign was over when it should have been time for everyone to go home - for motivating Palin and her army to buff up in order to meet the challenges of their vitriol and twisting of the truth.
When Sarah Palin returned to Alaska to resume her responsibilities as governor, the hit pieces, lies, slander and a slew of frivolous ethics complaints were coming from everywhere. The left was still throwing the kitchen sink at her - obviously fearing that four years would go by too quickly.
In the early days, not only were the articles about Palin whacked, but the comments section of online articles were full of ridiculously hateful things being posted by what seemed to be astroturfers who didn't see Palin's defeat in the 2008 election as the end of it. The fear that she would re-emerge as a national leader sent the left into cold sweats and a tizzy of unbelievable smearing born in the desperation from their inability to stop her. It was obvious from their widespread panic that they were going to do anything they could to try to destroy her. That only stregthened her resolved and her supporters rallied around her.
Palin supporters began hitting the comment boards to retaliate individually at first before forming groups who would call out articles for "strafing runs."
Team Sarah provided the first large forum for supporters to communicate with other and write blogs. It quickly grew to over 50,000 members as supporters became militant in their defense of their leader.
Conservatives4Palin came on board and began combatting the lies in January 2009 by bringing them to the attention of readers and then debunking them with facts. I was blown away by the first C4P article I ever read:
"Who is Sarah Palin?" Sarah's army was beginning to have a recognizable online presence.
The internet was starting to explode with pro-Palin sites. Prior to this, Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis (the official Alaska blog of the DNC during the 2008 election), The Mudflats, Just a Girl From Homer and Immoral Minority ruled the web as the big 4 anti-Palin sites which were widely read and referred to by the "so called journalists" at MSNBC and The Huffington Post. Those sites lost credibility, however, after going off the deep edge with such nonsense as Trig trutherism, a horrible photoshopped desecration of Trig, divorce rumors and allegations of FBI investigations that didn't exist - the so called "iceberg" which these sites touted that eventually melted as the heat of the pro-Palin blogosphere kicked in.
We've come a long way, baby.
Palin's resignation was the biggest test for her army and it proved their loyalty to her. She tweeted them and told them "it's all good" and wrote a Facebook Note telling her army to "TRUST" her in capital letters. They did. And at the same time, Palin put the world on notice that she would communicate directly with the people without the filter of the mainstream media. An article in the Washington Post,
Palin's Army Unbowed by Her Resignation, explained why there was hardly anyone "on the ledge" after Palin declared her independence from the shackles of ankle biters filing frivolous ethics complaints and a ruthless media which she criticized in her
farewell speech on July 29, 2009 (sorry, it was the only transcript I could find - you can see what those nasty little things said about her on the bottom). The American Spectator called it
Palin's Commencement Address. Pamela Geller wrote the article. I'll get to her in a minute.
One year after Palin's resignation,
Time Magazine had to get their two cents in with a quote of a Wall Street Poll that they don't link to where they point out that a poll of Americans shows "37% saying they would be 'very uncomfortable' with a Palin endorsement." They fail to mention that 30% - 35% of American voters are liberals or strongly lean Democrat. And while they do point out that Palin still has high unfavorables, they risk having this shot blow up on them when good hearted, fair minded people who make up the rest of the percentages that don't show favorably for Palin in the poll right now come out from behind their desks, their shops, their blue collar jobs, their multiple jobs, their hurried family lives running here and there with the kids to see how hard this woman has worked to get where she is and how much the media has been lying to them in the short minutes they've had to even watch the news or read a newspaper.
Those who continue the "quitter" meme perpetuate a false narrative that political scientists years from now will look back on and debunk.
According to
Texas for Sarah Palin,
David Bozeman, former North Carolina Libertarian Party Chairman wrote:
On July 3, 2009, Sarah Palin outsmarted her critics yet again by stepping down as governor of Alaska. She not only spared her state another year of politically-motivated lawsuits and ethics charges, she robbed the left of its most potent weapon — as Sarah Palin the private citizen, she could now move freely about the country, wielding her enormous influence without fear of endless investigations and possible censure.
A year later, even some liberals are beginning to see the light. John Nichols at
The Nation (h/t
Texas for Sarah Palin) writes:
The safer bet until recently was that Palin would opt out of the 2012 race, in order to keep making money and, perhaps, to position herself for a future run. But, like Ronald Reagan heading into the 1976 and 1980 Republican presidential primaries, she is beginning to establish a network of connections – and evidence of political savvy and influence – that make it harder and harder to dismiss her as a real prospect.
Juxtaposed against the gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight nature of the rest of the Republican 2012 pack, Palin is emerging as her party’s most potent prospect. A favorable result from Georgia will merely add to the argument that it is time to accept that Palin is becoming the definitional player in the GOP – much as another conservative outrider, and former governor, named Reagan was in the late 1970s.
Forget the Wall Street poll that Time referred to. Matthew Continetti at the
Weekly Standard points out that "
Gallup released a survey showing that, among Republicans, Palin has the highest name recognition -- and highest favorables -- of any major potential candidate for the 2012 nod." Those who are not paying attention are going to look up early next year and find her as one of the front runners for the GOP nomination.
Team Sarah and Conservatives4Palin were soon joined in the fight by
Texas for Sarah Palin and The
Palin Twibe Blog. The Ordinary Barbarians, as C4P coined them, were now on the move.
These and the many other pro-Palin blogs became the "snipers on the roof" who now provide cover for a Palin who is no longer on defense, but rather on the attack. There was a time when Sarah Palin was like a moose out in the open being hit by every liberal shot. But her resignation became the ultimate maneuver that allowed her to take cover, regroup and harness the energy of the movement and her followers.
When Sarah Palin went into seclusion after her resignation her army battled on. They hungered for the words of their leader until she came out of exile, opened her Twitter account and went on her book tour. Battles in her absence were tough and the mainstream media was relentless. Suddenly, amongst the clanging of swords and in the heat of battle, her army looked up to find her wielding the Excalibur of swords, her Facebook page, and firing off heavy artillery from a perch on Fox News. She was out front again, leading her emboldened army into battle.
Bloggers were now speaking out on issues and finding that Sarah Palin was right by their side posting Facebook notes and tweets in support of the cause. Sarah Palin had become one with her army, meeting her supporters on her book tour and taking time to step up to the plate to thank them or to jump into battle to help them.
Adrienne Ross ventured to Alaska and met Sarah Palin and her family. Ross would later have the honor of assisting Palin with her
book signing in Rochester, New York.
In a glorious warrior moment, Sarah Palin spoke out
in defense of South Carolina gubernatorial candidtate Nikki Haley who was being smeared with false accusations regarding a supposed extra-marital affair. Palin's swinging of the rhetorical sword brought Haley's opponents to their knees. She eventually won the runoff election in the SC gubernatorial primary by a landslide.
Sarah
tweeted her thanks to Tammy Bruce, a relentless Palin warrior, for doing the job the lamestream media wouldn't do when Bruce posted an article about the sinking of a South Korean warship. Then she went on Tammy Bruce's radio program for
an interview.
Warrior Palin is one of us. She doesn't stand behind the lines. She is out front and leading the charge as the minions grow and the Obots hear the sound of what could easily be
William Wallace's army as it prepares to liberate Scotland. Only in this case, there is a city on a hill whose shine has dulled now that it has become infested with socialists, racists, statists, progressives and historical revisionists. The stench is disgusting. But, we are coming home again to make that city shine once more with the help of our powerful leader, Sarah Palin.
She knows the pain and sorrow of what happened on 9/11. She went to ground zero during her run for the vice presidency. She is unapologetic about America's exceptionalism and she is rightfully hawkish in her stance against militant Islam and the groups who were behind the 9/11 attacks. She doesn't mince words despite the fact that her detractors seem to put her every linguistic nuance under a microscope. We know what she means. Even moreso, they know what she means - and that's why they feel they must belittle her.
Pamela Geller may have felt like a lone warrior battling the forces of a big apple gone rotten in her quest to stop the building of a mosque near Ground Zero. But when Sarah Palin arrived on the scene and the Palin army rode in swords-a-swinging, even NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg knew to pull back just in time to avoid being skewered when he threw his hands up begging people to understand that
he wasn't trying to say "Sarah Palin is a racist" after being slipped a note by one of his aides.
Yet Bloomberg still chooses to fight Sarah on it, a mistake that has resulted in
52% of New Yorkers now siding with her on the issue. The idea that the mayor of New York would support the building of a mosque near Ground Zero when his own bureaucratic machine whose gears have ground themselves to a halt is incapable of erecting the Freedom Tower to stand as one big middle finger to the soulless scum that attacked us that fateful day in 2001 is a total disgrace.
Geller
writes:
New Yorkers have witnessed how a tiny fish stalled and effectively killed a wonderful project for the rotting West Side Highway and wharfs. We have seen the city impose draconian smoking regulations, automobile and traffic regulations and even restaurant food bans (transfats). But this mosque is getting unprecedented rapid-fire action: cooperation from city officials who hadn't moved in 15 years before they started moving on this. There is more grease on these wheels than in the Gulf.
Michael Bloomberg is a disgrace. He has disgraced New York City and its people.
Pamela Geller could not be more dead on if she drove into it at 90 degree angle. What an incredible articulation of everything I have thought about New York City government. She painted the picture that was in my mind like she was
Rembrandt van Rijn.
Early in my blogging days, when looking for like minded people and looking for quotes to support my arguments for Palin, I stumbled across
this article about Palin's Climategate editorial which prompted me to read Geller's blog. I thought to myself "now here's someone willing to fight for Sarah Palin." She would later land it with precision and dead on intellectual accuracy when she stood up for Sarah after she resigned and articulated the things the rest of us were just starting to figure out in this
vlog:
That vlog sealed it for me. Geller had just outlined the future of the entire movement. One year later, she was
proven right. In Geller's most recent article, she
writes:
When she resigned as governor of Alaska, I predicted that she would soon be leading a new revolution of American patriots. And she is doing so. She is not afraid of the jackals, hyenas and vultures who troll her home, her garbage cans and her most prized possession, her children. She is unbowed. She has spine, character, ethics, integrity and above all, true grit.
Geller's reward for her vigorous defense of Palin after her resignation came in the form of a
couple of tweets by Palin in opposition to the mosque being built in New York City, a cause for which Geller had been working so hard. It would be only fitting if this swing of the mighty Palin sword would bring that mosque down.
Since Palin's resignation, she has written
Going Rouge: An American Life, raised over a million dollars with
SarahPAC, become a Fox News contributor, become a motivational speaker and has volunteered her time to give speeches and do fundraising for organizations that support children with special needs and pro-life causes. She is currently working on a documentary about Alaska and is also working on a second book.
The relationship that Sarah Palin has with her army is summed up in a phone call she made to the
Conservatives For Palin Meet and Greet earlier this month.
I want to encourage you to keep the faith and keep up the good fight, you guys, because I know you’ve got my back, and I’ve got your back…
We need to represent, as a party, an effort that will usher in a new era of prosperity and opportunity for all Americans. And I think that it really is up to us to write a new chapter in our history. We can do that, and C4P is going to be instrumental in this. Remember, I’m with you. I appreciate you’re with me.
Aaron Guerrero, writing for the Daily Caller,
says "No other Republican commands the kind of loyalty and bedrock support amongst the party faithful that she does." The reason for the "bedrock support" is you have a leader who loves her people as much as they love her.
