As Sarah Palin prepares to step down from her elected position of governor of Alaska – okay, she’s a year and a half premature, but who’s counting? – she can take pride in knowing that she’s left a lump in the throat (and lower regions of the anatomy) of quite a few right-leaning pundits. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an outbreak of puppy love over the last year as I’ve seen displayed by certain sections of the conservative commentariat towards the Quittah from Wasilla. These guys are so smitten as to be absolutely gobsmacked.
The champion gobsmackee is still Rich Lowry of National Review Online, who posted this love note after Palin’s debate with Joe Biden last October:
I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
Thankfully, Rich spared us the gory details as to exactly which part of his body “sat up a little straighter.”
Moving closer to home, the AJC’s Jim Wooten was obviously quite taken by the lady who likes to slaughter wolves from airplanes, writing on Sept. 7, shortly after she was chosen for the McCain ticket:
She is one of us. Her family is the one where the rain falls and the faucet drips and, no matter what, the family deals with it. These families go to work every day, send their sons and daughters off to fight the country’s wars, nurse their children through crisis, and walk proudly together to face the troubles that come their way.
Well, they face the troubles that come their way as long as David Letterman doesn’t make fun of them in a monologue. Then they’re outta here.
Wooten added this observation of the Palin bunch:
It’s the family that’s proud to be American composed of those who feel goose bumps when the flag passes in parades.
I hope those are goose bumps and not starbursts. Of course, Wooten was much more measured than Lowry in his affection for the Kawasaki-eyeglass-wearing chief executive:
People in the small towns where she grew up, “love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” It’s not conditional love. It’s not love based on whether we behave and believe as others wish. It’s lasting and unconditional.
Palin’s story is our story. Her life is our life.
She and McCain will carry the South because her values and his are ours.
She is not of Washington.
She is of us.
No, sir, she is not of Washington, except for those occasions when her good friend Greta van Susteren just happens to invite first bubba Todd Palin to a fancy dinner for White House correspondents.
Wooten followed up with these sage observations in a Sept. 16 column:
Men and women alike found her captivating, a blend of smart, independent and accessible woman that women could relate to and the good ol’ girl the men would like in the F-150 beside them on way to the hunt. No other woman on the national scene touches people on the levels that Palin does.
Wooten was obviously convinced that the plucky gov who wears pantyhose under her jogging shorts was going to drag McCain, like a gut-shot deer, across the finish line to victory:
Democrats have to attack. Or do they? Every effort so far has failed, whether launched by the Obama campaign or by the crazies on the left who are terrified that an election that was theirs may be slipping away.
Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, now a commentator, offers free but sound advice to the Obama campaign: Aim for the old guy. Palin’s trouble.
They can do the gotchas. They can make sport of her observation about the proximity of Alaska and Russia, as Saturday Night Live amusingly did. They can dig for dirt. But they’d be smarter to take Noonan’s advice and ignore her.
For the record, I’m hoping they don’t. My money’s on Palin.
I hope you didn’t bet all your retirement savings, Jim.
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