Sarah Palin: Crashing the "Diversity" Party

One can only imagine the bitterness of those commonly referred to as "the elites," as in the media, the intelligentsia, the raconteurs and latte drinkers, the dilettantes of the left who must surely feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.  For the past year they have operated under the bracing notion that they were riding the crest of history; that they, through, their support of the Sainted One, the great Obama, had joined in a grand and noble undertaking.  They became, as he was, agents of reform, of a second Camelot, of hope and change, only to find, in the matter of a brief five days, from August 29, when McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate, to September 3, when she delivered her acceptance speech in St. Paul, that the oxygen had been sucked out of the Obama campaign - and all their lofty self assumptions and vanities were left tattered and broken on the Denver convention floor.

The sudden ascension of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, on the national scene, as Republican Vice Presidential running mate for Presidential hopeful John McCain, has turned the political universe upside down and nowhere more so than in the Obama campaign, the mainstream media, and amidst the fever swamps of the hard-core angry left.  This authentically American woman, a moose hunting, happily married mother of five, including a Down's baby born only five months ago (which is to say, not aborted), has become every bit the phenomenon that Obama was, only more so, and in so brief a time, as to have left the nation breathless, and her adversaries - dumbfounded.  She draws huge crowds, energizes her base, and is the same "rock star" that Obama had been; in the process, she has downgraded him to that of second-string act.  

Sarah Palin is pro life, a member of the NRA, believes in limited government and lower taxes, and not afraid of challenging entrenched interests, including within her own party.  She is feisty, intelligent... and beautiful.  She also attends (horrors!) an Evangelical Church, which inspires fear and loathing like nothing else among many on the left who regard the Christian Right with greater contempt than they do homicidal Islamic extremists.

Observers have already noted the stream of vicious attacks and smears directed against her and her family, a level of scalding media scrutiny reserved only for those representing the greatest threat.  It will be a magnitude of investigation that Obama, with all his radical associations will never have to endure being as he is the Chosen One, anointed by the very same media who should be asking all the questions.  

For Palin, though, there will be no such reprieve for she commits the gravest offense: she is an emerging luminary of an "oppressed" group ("women") and is not herself a liberal.  

Liberals, of course, are the masters of "diversity politics"; they are the tribunes of the underclass and defenders of the downtrodden, especially those victimized by our racist, sexist nation.  Liberals understand the suffering of "exploited" peoples (blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, the "poor," etc.); it is from the ranks of liberals that come the various leaders and notables representing such communities.  But now, from the frozen North comes an upstart, conservative, Evangelical woman, and beautiful, no less, and on the Republican national ticket of all things, threatening to usurp the entire diversity apparatus upon which so much of the liberal imagination depends.  

And what a galling irony for liberals, if the historical campaign this year, after all the pomp and pageantry, turns out not to be Obama, not to be Hillary, but the heretofore unknown pro-life Governor from Alaska?  What if the one who finally shatters the "glass ceiling with 18 million cracks" is not the pantsuit wearing liberal feminist diva, Hillary Clinton, but the outsider who wears skirts, reads the bible, and does not consider herself a feminist at all?  

What howls of rage will bellow from the lips of the pundits and assorted liberal hacks?  What handwringing desperation shall befall the Obama-smitten in the media, from the NY Times and Washington Post and other partisan bastions, who have proclaimed the arrival of the liberal Messiah?  

Expect a war, no less, for their outrage will know no bounds.  This was the year of Obama, the first black President, a candidate they have courted and loved.  The Obama campaign was their national passion play, their historical moment to repair the original sin of their country (racism), to strut and self congratulate, and to relieve themselves of their white liberal guilt over being part of this wretched state in the first place.  

No, the little Philistine from the Klondike, an outsider, mother of five, red neck bible thumper and graduate from a state college will not take that away from them!  

This election year will indeed be historic, only not, perhaps, as liberals imagined it.  The historic candidate this year will not be Hillary and may not be Obama but the Republican, Sarah Palin.  The diversity fantasies of the left will be shattered.