Saturday, November 08, 2008

Sarah Palin: GOP Scapegoat


I keep hearing news that Sarah Palin is being blamed for the GOP loss in Election 2008 - but it is not just the Democrats that are criticizing her! The moderate Republican leadership is essentially throwing her under the bus.

The economy was a large factor in this election, and the GOP refused to hammer the advantages of fiscal conservatism during the campaign. In fact, Barack 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 as the mainstream media is reporting. I believe she actually helped the ticket. Without Sarah Palin, the conservative base, or at least portions of it, would not have been energized as it was. She was actually drawing crowds larger than John McCain, for God's sake.

Some would argue that the line of reasoning that conservatism is the recipe for a GOP win is patently false, and that McCain actually lost because he was not liberal enough. This, I believe, is pure poppy-cock. There is a certain advantage to appealing to independents, but not to the point that you base your whole campaign on it.

Proposition 8, the state amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, won in California (and similar measures won by greater margins in Florida and Arizona - bringing the total to 31 states that currently ban gay marriage) - and realize that California is a state that was overwhelmingly in the tank for Barack Obama. If the country is heading left as some people seem to think, then how do you explain Proposition 8 winning? Is that how a nation heading left votes?

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