Earning his pay

Joe Scarborough was once a Republican congressman from Florida.  During his time in the House he had a solid conservative record.  However after resigning from the House and failing as a radio talk show host he has aligned himself with the über-left cable channel MSNBC as their token "conservative".  However his actions since becoming Keith Olbermann's butt-boy have shown that he is very aware of who is signing his paychecks.

The latest incident of Joe dancing to the tune of his progressive paymasters is a hit piece on Sarah Palin penned for the left-wing political blog Politico:

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private.

The Republican "leaders" who are worried about the unelectability of Mrs. Palin are the same people who backed Charlie Christ because Marco Rubio was just a crazy Tea Party candidate that had no chance of getting elected.  These are the "leaders" who care far more about being invited to the right Georgetown cocktail parties and getting a friendly reception on the Sunday cable shows than they do about saving the country.

Everybody knows that Palin is a busy woman. The former half-term governor of Alaska stays so busy these days that one wonders how this mother of five manages to juggle her new reality show, follow her eldest daughter’s dancing career and launch her latest frenetic book tour while still finding the time to insult a slew of revered presidents and first ladies.


You’ve got to admit hers is a breathtaking high-wire act.


What man or mouse with a fully functioning human brain and a résumé as thin as Palin’s would flirt with a presidential run? It makes the political biography of Barack Obama look more like Winston Churchill’s, despite the fact that the 44th president breezed into the Oval Office as little more than a glorified state senator.

This is funny in a sad and pathetic kind of way.  Obama was a "community organizer" (translation: gutter thug street agitator) in the most corrupt city in the nation (and that's saying something in a nation that also includes New Orleans, LA and Marshall, NC) who became a state senator, an office he resigned from to run for the US Senate, an office he resigned from after actually working at for 185 days to run for president.

As a state senator he distinguished himself by voting "present" a record number of times.  In the US Senate he distinguished himself by quickly surpassing Ted Kennedy as the most liberal Senator (a real accomplishment since Kennedy had a decades-long head start).  And as president Obama has surpassed all his earlier achievements by driving the nation's economy into the ground like a tent peg, insulting our oldest and most important allies, bowing and scraping before our enemies and doing absolutely nothing while Iran, the most dangerous rogue regime on the planet develops nuclear weapons.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was a multi-term mayor, the most popular governor in the nation and as vice-presidential candidate almost single handedly managed to drag the rotting corpse of John McCain to victory in the 2008 election (unfortunately a VP candidate no matter how strong cannot overcome a wretchedly bad presidential candidate).

Since leaving the governors office she has taken a leading position in the Tea Party movement where she played a key role in the historic gains made by the GOP in the 2010 mid-term elections.  She routinely frames the terms of national debate on issues like Obama's health care takeover through something as simple as a Twitter post and she has side stepped a relentlessly hostile mainstream media through the writing of two best selling books and a popular television show.

Anyone who thinks that Barack Obama's record is somehow more impressive that Governor Palin's is delusional on the order of someone who believes that the CIA has implanted a computer chip up his ass and that the aliens from Zeta Reticuli are beaming messages into his brain.

Still, Palin is undeterred, charging ahead maniacally while declaring her intention to run for the top office in the land if “nobody else will.” Adding audacity to this dopey dream is that Palin can’t stop herself from taking swings at Republican giants. In the past month alone, she has mocked Ronald Reagan’s credentials, dismissed George H.W. and Barbara Bush as arrogant “blue bloods” and blamed George W. Bush for wrecking the economy.


Wow. That’ll win ’em over in Iowa.

One can only guess what comes next on Palin’s bizarre road show. Maybe the publishing world’s favorite reality star can keep drawing attention and selling billions of books by spitting on John Wayne’s grave or “manning up” by shooting an American bald eagle.


Or how about this? Maybe Palin could show up on Fox News and build her weak résumé by tearing down Reagan’s.


Oh, wait. Been there, done that.

When Sean Hannity asked Palin whether being in a reality show diminished her standing to be president, the former half-term governor mocked Reagan’s biography, dismissing him as “an actor.”

Sounding like every left-wing politician and media elitist who ridiculed Reagan for decades, Palin sneered that she could be president if the actor from “Bedtime for Bonzo” managed to do so.

Except that isn't what Mrs. Palin did.  The left dismissed all of Ronald Reagan's accomplishments as Governor of California and as president of the Screen Actors Guild as well as the years he spent traveling the nation giving lectures on the greatness of America and the evils of communism - just like they dismisse Mrs. Palin's record by calling her a former beauty contestant.

As far as the Democrat party was concerned Ronald Reagan was entirely defined by the movie Bedtime for Bonzo.  And it wasn't only Democrats who wanted to dismiss Mr. Reagan.  Republican establishment leaders also wanted to dismiss the Gipper as well.  Remember how George H.W. Bush told Gorbachev (the leader of the USSR - our enemy in the Cold War) that Reagan was "very conservative, all the dummies and blockheads are with him"?

Both the political left and Republican elites hated Reagan in the same way and for the same reasons that they hate Sarah Palin.

After Palin mocked Reagan’s credentials, the TLC reality show star took aim at the 41st president and his wife. Borrowing again from old left-wing attacks that Democrats used against GOP presidents, Palin channeled Ann Richards by bashing Bush and his wife as “blue bloods” who had wrecked America.


Palin was perturbed that a former president and his wife would dare to answer a question about whom they preferred for president in 2012. Perhaps her anger was understandable. After all, these disconnected “blue bloods” had nothing in their backgrounds that could ever make them understand “real America” like a former governor from Alaska who quit in the middle of her first term and then got rich.

Clearly Scarborough has been hanging out with his Marxist buddies at MSNBC for too long.  Why else slam Mrs. Palin for "getting rich"?

Let us also remember that Mrs. Palin didn't take issue with Barbara Bush because she expressed the opinion that Palin was not her choice for President.  It was the insulting and dismissive way that Mrs. Bush expressed her opinion.  It is the difference between saying that one does not believe that Barack Obama should be president because his position on important issues is wrong and saying that Mr. Obama shouldn't be president because "a jungle bunny shouldn't be in the White House unless he's pushing a broom".

Scarborough then goes on to express his admiration for George H.W. Bush's record as a combat pilot in WWII. 

Let me say that I (along with most readers of this blog) honor former President Bush's military record.  However an honorable record of military service is no guarantee that a politician will be a conservative (remember John Glenn?) or even an honorable man (remember Jack Mrutha?).

The senior Bush was one of the old line "blue blood" elites who used to dominate the Republican party.  Ronald Reagan did not like him and did not want him as a running mate but was forced to accept him on the threat of having to run against the open opposition of significant elements of the Republican party as well as the Democrats.

After becoming president Mr. Bush amply repaid his anti-Reagan backers by running away from Mr. Reagan's economic policies as fast as he could.

And now a point of personal privilege. I work hard every day to assume the best of Americans who engage in public service. But I am offended by Palin’s attempt to build herself up by tearing down great men like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Ronald Reagan was a great man in every sense of the word.  However George H.W. Bush had a great war record for which he deserves the nation's respect and thanks but a very poor record as a politician.  He is the man who pissed away the Reagan majority and apparently did it deliberately.  Apparently Mr. Bush found a Republican party in the minority to be preferable to a dominant GOP under the control of real conservatives.

Palin is not a stupid woman. But like the current president, she still does not know what she does not know. And she does know how to make millions of dollars, even if she embarrasses herself while doing it.

There's that class envy again.  Keep sucking up to your MSNBC masters Joe.

That reality hardly makes Palin unique, but this is one Republican who would prefer that the former half-term governor promote her reality shows and hawk her books without demeaning the reputations of Presidents Reagan and Bush. These great men dedicated their lives to public service and are too good to be fodder for her gaudy circus sideshow.

Again, she didn't "demean" the reputation of Ronald Reagan.  She pointed out that the Democrats and their allies among the GOP establishment elites trashed Reagan in the same way and for the same reasons that they trash her. 

Also Joe, when you call yourself a Republican in the interest of accuracy make sure you write it like this, "Republican".

If Republicans want to embrace Palin as a cultural icon whose anti-intellectualism fulfills a base political need, then have at it. I suppose it’s cheaper than therapy.

Since the Wilson administration the United States of America has been tormented by "intellectuals" in high places.  Men like Woodrow Wilson, FDR and his "brain trust", the Kennedys and their "best and brightest" and now B. Hussein Obama and his swarm of "Czars" have done incalculable damage to this nation.  It is long past time when we turn our backs on Ivy League incompetence and embrace the real intelligence represented by common sense and real world experience.  The kind of common sense and real world experience embodied by Sarah Palin, successful businesswoman, mayor and governor.

But if the party of Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio wants to return to the White House anytime soon, it’s time that Republican leaders started standing up and speaking the truth to Palin.

Note how Scarborough drops George H.W. Bush here and invokes three real conservatives as the standard bearers of the GOP.  Except that we have already showed how Palin has more in common with Reagan than Scarborough ever will and Rubio was a Palin/Tea Party backed insurgent conservative who had to overcome the opposition of "blue bloods" within the GOP who are fighting tooth and nail to keep it from becoming a conservative party.

When he was in the House or Representatives Mr. Scarborough has a record he could be proud of.  Since then he has sold out by working for the most insanely left-wing media outlet he could find.

What has happened to Scarborough since that sellout proves the old proverb.  "When you dance with the Devil the Devil don't change.  The Devil changes you."