Sarah Palin gets the spiteful Margaret Thatcher treatment

[GaryC 7]

Sarah Palin gets the spiteful Margaret Thatcher treatment

By Janet Daley

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 04/09/2008

There are few sights more bloodcurdling than the liberal pack in full cry. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin is a testimony to the degree of panic her appointment has generated in Leftist circles.

It would seem that it is only sexist to trash a woman candidate if she is a Woman Candidate, which is to say a liberal.

Sarah Palin addresses the Republican National Convention

Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Sarah Palin terrifies those on the political left

It took about 20 minutes after John McCain announced her as his running mate for the attack machine to mobilise: woman candidate (bleep, bleep), no previous warning (nee-naw, nee-naw), exterminate, exterminate.

At first, it was pretty tenuous stuff: her husband had once been caught on a drink-drive charge - when he was 22 years old. You don't say. In blue-collar America, having only one drink-drive offence pretty much qualifies you as a Grade A wimp.

Then the piranhas got hold of a real prize (or so they thought): the 17-year-old daughter of this Christian Evangelical family was pregnant.

Yes, these things happen - and this particular thing happens quite a lot among the working-class American families that Mrs Palin personifies. She and her daughter are being true to their convictions: the girl will have her baby and marry her boyfriend. There will be no abortion or adoption.

The Palin family will offer them love, compassion and support. What's your problem? Christianity (even of the Evangelical sort) does not expect human beings to be faultless: it demands only that they make amends for their transgressions and accept responsibility for them.

The Evangelical churches have made it their particular mission in recent years to support teenage mothers and urge their families to stand by them. So where is the shame in this situation?

Now those who are not of the Palins' religious persuasion may well feel that it is wrong to allow a 17-year-old to marry and start a family. If one of my daughters had become pregnant at the age of 17, would I have advised her to have the baby and marry the father? No, I would not.

Do I respect the decision of another mother and daughter to make that choice based on their own values? Yes, I do. And that - as far as I am concerned - is what it means to be a "liberal". Which brings us to the subject of those hokey old redneck values that the Guardian and the blogosphere find so amusing (or pernicious, depending on their degree of dedication).

I personally am, and always have been, fervently pro-choice on abortion. I do not consider this to be the only sanctified Woman's point of view because I am aware that huge numbers of women disagree with me.

Whenever I touch on the subject, they write in and tell me so, often in eloquent and passionate terms. But according to the official feminist sisterhood (which was taken over by the totalitarian Marxist tendency long ago) you can represent the views of Women only if you accept the tenets of their ideology. Ergo, Mrs Palin is not a Woman Candidate.

She is a renegade, the gender equivalent of an Uncle Tom. In the US, her position is particularly incendiary because it is part of the culture war between metropolitan liberals and provincial America: that vast fly-over country where people (or "folks", as they call themselves) still live by the standards the Palin family embodies. Life is about hard work and hard play.

They hunt with guns from childhood. They talk about sin (and redemption) in ways that embarrass the urban elite, and they regard patriotism as a fundamental part of their moral code. (It is the liberals' ambivalence about patriotism that they detest most.)

Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Mrs Palin is coming in for both barrels of Left-wing contempt: misogyny and snobbery. Where Lady Thatcher was dismissed as a "grocer's daughter" by people who called themselves egalitarian, Mrs Palin is regarded as a small-town nobody by those who claim to represent "ordinary people".

What the metropolitan sophisticates failed to understand in the 1980s when Thatcher won election after election is even more the case in the US: most (and I do mean most) ordinary people actually believe in the basic decencies, the "small-town values", of family, marital fidelity, and personal responsibility. They believe in and honour them - even if they do not manage to uphold them.

Middle America - of which Alaska is spiritually, if not geographically, a part - builds its life around those ideals and regards commonplace moral lapses as part of the eternal struggle to be good.

The life of small-town USA is based on the principles of those Protestant colonial settlers who founded the nation: hard work, self-improvement, personal faith and family devotion. Mrs Palin speaks to and for them in a way that patronising "liberal" elitists find infuriating.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...9/04/do0404.xml

[Chica Yeyé 41]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Maggie Thatcher belonged to the Tory party and in her era that was (and is still) the most elitist party out there - comprised largely of hereditary peers (in the House of Lords) and the most affluent members of British society.

Back then, the old Labour party (as opposed to Tony Blair's Centre-right New Labour) were the real left-wing opposition. The party of Trade Unions and the Working Class. Thatcher is villified over there because she single-handedly (and quite deliberately) destroyed Britain's manufacturing industry. This has had the same implications that the US is now discovering through the outsourcing of US manufacturing jobs.

I don't think Palin given her 5 minutes of exposure on the national political stage can reasonably be compared with Margaret Thatcher at this point - given that she was (along with Ronald Reagan) one of the most controversial world leaders in recent history.

Of course if Palin does an Edward Heath to John McCain there might be reason to change this assessment

[GaryC 7]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

Not by "liberals" it wasn't...

[Peikko 1,575]

It's a totally disingenuous comparison as if the press picked on Margaret Thatcher because of her gender or her family's antics - although Mark did get some press coverage due to getting lost in the desert during some race if I remember right.

The UK press certainly gave her a rough ride at times, and rightly so but it was all based on her political ideology. She wouldn't have made it five minutes on the polical scene in the UK if she had as flimsy a resume as Ms Palin and she would never have made it to PM position. The UK PM is not marketed as a 'star' role.

[GaryC 7]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

Not by "liberals" it wasn't...

Right.....

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

Not by "liberals" it wasn't...

Right.....

Gary - the political landscape of the UK in the 80's and late 70's isn't the same as it is here. There wasn't really a liberal opposition to Thatcher back then - the people who opposed her were the people in her own party and the socialist Old Labour party.

[IAMX 3,055]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

Not by "liberals" it wasn't...

Right.....

Gary - the political landscape of the UK in the 80's and late 70's isn't the same as it is here. There wasn't really a liberal opposition to Thatcher back then - the people who opposed her were the people in her own party and the socialist Old Labour party.

Yeah, the Thatcher treatment then would be the "Rockefeller Republican" treatment by the ruling neo-conservatives.

[GaryC 7]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

Not by "liberals" it wasn't...

Right.....

Gary - the political landscape of the UK in the 80's and late 70's isn't the same as it is here. There wasn't really a liberal opposition to Thatcher back then - the people who opposed her were the people in her own party and the socialist Old Labour party.

The label really makes no difference. The smears are the same and its wrong. The label of the people doing it really isn't germane.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Now we can compare Palin to Thatcher??? I don't think so....

Totally missed the point didn't you? The OP didn't say Palin was like Thatcher but her treatment in the press is similar.

Not by "liberals" it wasn't...

Right.....

Gary - the political landscape of the UK in the 80's and late 70's isn't the same as it is here. There wasn't really a liberal opposition to Thatcher back then - the people who opposed her were the people in her own party and the socialist Old Labour party.

The label really makes no difference. The smears are the same and its wrong. The label of the people doing it really isn't germane.

I guess that's what you meant by "Right....."

[Peikko 1,575]

Seriously, the intention of this piece is to lend credibility by association (right wing ladies together in the face of a heckling left wing media)

The association is bogus, there was no 'left wing media' heckling Mr T, and the bad press she did receive was always related to her political opinions and not to being a woman or a 'grocer's daughter)

That rather suggests to me that even the right are scrabbling to make sense of this VP choice and are certainly scrambling to create substance where there is very little.

It's no use firing back with the 'but Obama isn't either' at me, because I have already placed grave reservations on his lack of experience.

Edited September 4, 2008 by Madame Cleo

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I think its weird given that few people outside of Alaska had actually heard of Palin until the other day.

Suddenly she hits the headlines at the convention and we're all supposed to see shades of other "courageous women leaders". Its just part of the usual hysteria - like Obama Palin is something of an unknown quantity as far as National politics is concerned - though its clearer where she stands (basically a textbook Republican agenda). If you don't want a Republican agenda - then Palin isn't going to do anything for you.

Edited September 4, 2008 by Paul Daniels

[GaryC 7]

I think its weird given that few people outside of Alaska had actually heard of Palin until the other day.

Suddenly she hits the headlines at the convention and we're all supposed to see shades of other "courageous women leaders". Its just part of the usual hysteria - like Obama Palin is something of an unknown quantity as far as National politics is concerned - though its clearer where she stands (basically a textbook Republican agenda). If you don't want a Republican agenda - then Palin isn't going to do anything for you.

I suggested her as a running mate back when McCain clinched the nomination. I have known who she is since she was elected governor of Alaska. A lot more people knew of her than you think.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I think its weird given that few people outside of Alaska had actually heard of Palin until the other day.

Suddenly she hits the headlines at the convention and we're all supposed to see shades of other "courageous women leaders". Its just part of the usual hysteria - like Obama Palin is something of an unknown quantity as far as National politics is concerned - though its clearer where she stands (basically a textbook Republican agenda). If you don't want a Republican agenda - then Palin isn't going to do anything for you.

I suggested her as a running mate back when McCain clinched the nomination. I have known who she is since she was elected governor of Alaska. A lot more people knew of her than you think.

I expect partisans to be at least somewhat familiar with who runs what, where.