Growing up in a Baptist church, I was taught at a young age there are sins of omission (failure to do something you should do) and commission (committing a sin willfully).  Yesterday, I encountered a sin of omission in the Washington Post article detailing Sarah Palin’s confession that she visited Canadian hospitals as a child.  Palin has criticized the medical system in Canada on multiple occasions and the Washington Post was clearly trying to play gotcha.

Palin states:

“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not — this was in the ’60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

I was a little surprised that Palin even mentioned this incident as she has made clear her disdain for socialized medicine.  Now there is one minor detail missing from the Washington Post’s story.  With a little fact checking, one finds that Whitehorse is the capitol of the Yukon province of Canada.  This is important for one reason, the Yukon province did not begin socialized medicine until April 1, 1972 and their visits occurred in the 1960’s.  So while the Washington Post enjoys painting Sarah Palin as a hypocritical liar, I enjoy proving them guilty of omitting relevant information in a story seeking to smear someone they don’t like.  The Washington Post clearly has an agenda to make Palin look dumb and sought to spin one of her statements by leaving out facts that rendered their story pointless.

I am not out to push Sarah Palin as a potential presidential candidate in 2012, I have other people (Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels) that I want to run.  But the smear stories that the mainstream regularly runs seeking to make Palin look like a fool prove a point about any “news” story on a public figure.  It is important to fact check information and try to discern the motivation behind a story that paints someone in a negative light before believing what is printed.

Steve Schmidt, chief campaign strategist for failed Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, declares that Sarah Palin could bring “a catastrophic election result” if she were the Republican nominee in 2012. CBSNews.com blogger Stephanie Condon writes:

Calling Sarah Palin a potentially “catastrophic” choice for the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, John McCain’s former chief campaign strategist Steve Schmidt said today the Republican party needs to look more toward the center.

“I think she has talents, but my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican party in 2012,” he said. “Were she to be the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result.”

The Republican Party already moved toward the center when it nominated Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008. McCain lost by more than 8 million votes, with 58,343,671 votes to Barack Obama’s 66,882,230 votes. The fact of the matter is that the Republican Party has had two consecutive disastrous elections because the GOP abandoned the core conservative principles that once defined the party. The GOP lost both the House and Senate in 2006 after passing multiple laws that expanded government and failing to control the government spending that created a huge deficit.

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Did you know Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tortures animals for fun? Neither did I. Shocking, ain’t it? While I’m using hyperbole here, that is not too far removed from the accusations made in he campaign against Palin by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, which dispatched actress Ashley Judd to attack Palin on Alaska’s program to reduce the wolf population.

As the owner of two dogs, the DOW video was not easy to watch. I do not want to see animals suffer needlessly. However, I know two things that caused me to take the criticism with a grain (well, more than a grain) of salt. First, many Leftists have an unholy hatred of Sarah Palin and some are not above spreading untruths in the campaign against her. (Remember the accusations about her son, Trig?) The credibility of a number of Palin-haters leaves a lot to be desired, and this is obviously a politically-motivated campaign to damage Palin’s prospects of becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for President in 2012.

Second, animal-rights activists have been waging a jihad against hunting for years now. In response to a 1993 deer hunt in Brown County, “an anonymous letter was sent to the DNR and selected media organizations threatening that people dressed in deer colors and wearing fake antlers will infiltrate the park during the kill.” The stupidity and irresponsibility of such tactics are obvious. Make no mistake: the philosophy behind this campaign (other than smearing Palin) is that all hunting is bad, not a question about tactics.

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Well, John McCain is still a son of a b****. But with the election and his status as Republican presidential nominee six weeks in the past, he’s no longer our son of a b****.

Cold, right?

Well, as Allahpundit notes at Hot Air, six weeks makes a lot of difference in John McCain’s opinion of Sarah Palin, too:

Think how easy it would have been to throw her a bone without committing to anything, e.g., “It’s too early to be making endorsements when we don’t know who’s running or what the issues will be, but naturally she’s my preference going into it.” It would have made for an awkward soundbite three years from now if he ended up endorsing someone else, but endorsing someone else will be sufficiently awkward on its own terms that that soundbite would hardly make it worse.

Consider this another brick in the reconstruction of his centrist brand. (More on that in the next post.) Exit question: What exactly does he mean when he answers Steph’s point about endorsing her for VP just six weeks ago by saying, “Well sure, but now we’re in a whole election cycle”? What’s changed in six weeks, besides her usefulness to him?

Now, I won’t sit here and endorse Sarah Palin for 2012 or 2016 or even 2020 (they’re all a long ways off, and who knows what will happen in the meantime). But then, I didn’t put her on my presidential ticket as my running mate, and I didn’t spend three months flying around the country telling everybody how great and qualified she was to be my running mate.

John McCain has many redeeming qualities. Loyalty to his party, or to his erstwhile political allies, has never been one of them, particularly when they are no longer useful to him.

I’m glad to return the favor.

Even though the McCain/Palin ticket lost the election almost one month ago, half of that ticket is still getting tons of media attention….and it’s not the top half of the ticket either.  Sarah Palin has defied the odds and not only remained on the media radar, she’s also been relevant.

Despite the actions and wishes of liberals, moderate Republicans and anonymous McCain staffers, she’s maintained her popularity within the party.  From highlighting the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami, to the unfortunate (albeit slightly humorous) turkey pardon/wood chipper incident, to her campaigning in Georgia in the Saxby Chambliss runoff, Palin’s star still burns white hot.  Especially when it comes to internet searches.

Via Politico:

Palin was the most popular Lycos search from the week she joined the ticket continuously through last Sunday, some two weeks after the election, when she was dethroned by Paris Hilton, the celebutante whom John McCain famously compared to Barack Obama.

The Alaska governor now ranks fourth, just one spot below Obama, on the weekly Lycos 50 list.

“People are still searching for her in record numbers,” said Kathy O’Reilly, a spokeswoman for Lycos. “How bizarre is that? Obama is the president-elect after the most historic election of all time and you’d think he would be dominating search activity and he only now is going ahead of her.”

But the question since John McCain’s defeat has been, what’s Sarah Palin’s role in the GOP after the election? The reaction have been varied from she should be the GOP nominee in ‘12 to “won’t she just go away!”.

But that doesn’t stop the faithful.

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*UPDATE* – Here is the direct link to the Zogby Ziegler media poll that goes along with the video below.

Think that’s crazy?  Check out some of the alarming stats they found in the Zogby poll they commissioned after the leap.

Well, I thought with the upcoming exit of Ted Steven (US Senator from Alaska), Sarah Palin might have been interested in running for his seat.

She shed some light on that last night:

I still think the Senate position is a strong move to keep Palin relevant in the leadership of the GOP.

Maybe she has other plans…

In case you missed, here is the Sarah Palin interview on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren.  After you get through the first five minutes talking about her “clothes” and other dumb controversies, it finally gets good.  Though one note to Governor Palin.  Not all bloggers live in the mom’s basement and blog in their pajamas.

For instance, I own my own house, but have no basement.  

Part One:

(Watch the rest after the leap)

Leftists in the Democratic Party and “moderates” in the Republican Party are pointing to Sarah Palin as the reason John McCain lost, and both groups are arguing that the Republican Party needs to jettison or marginalize social conservatives if the GOP hopes to be successful in future elections. The argument lacks factual basis and ignores recent political history, including the election results of last week. Republicans will do great damage to their chances of victory in 2010 and 2012 by pushing social conservatives aside in favor of a more “big tent” party.

When Palin was announced as McCain’s choice for Vice President, she immediately closed the “enthusiasm gap” between the Republican and Democratic activist bases. Palin’s life story, especially regarding Trig Palin, resonated with social conservatives and provided a significant contrast with Barack Obama’s aggressive advocacy of abortion “rights”. Had it not been for Palin, McCain’s margin of loss would probably have been larger than it was. Had McCain picked abortion “rights” advocate Joe Lieberman as his Vice Presidential nominee, it would have been a disaster.

Are social conservatives hurting the Republican Party? How quickly we forget 2004, when “values voters” pulled President Bush out of the fire and were a major reason why he was re-elected. How quickly we forget 2006, when Democrats recruited a number of anti-abortion candidates to run for Congress, including Brad Ellsworth and Joe Donnelly in Indiana. Ellsworth and Donnelly unseated Republican incumbents John Hostettler and Chris Chocola two years ago, and both won re-election by comfortable margins this year. If social conservatives are harming the Republican Party, why were Democrats openly recruiting anti-abortion candidates to run for Congress?

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For all the moderate haters of Sarah Palin and the conservatives in the GOP, Rasmussen speaks:

From Nov. 4:

Republicans are happier with their vice presidential candidate than their presidential nominee, while Democrats feel good about both candidates on their ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Republicans say John McCain made the right choice by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate…

From today, Nov. 7:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.

Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.

When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

These findings echo a survey earlier this week which found that Republicans were happier with their vice presidential candidate than with their presidential nominee. Seventy-one percent (71%) said McCain made the right choice by picking Palin as his running mate, while only 65% said the party picked the right nominee for president.

So just in case you were thinking Palin was a drag to the ticket (and this part goes out to the lefty trolls as well), the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s VP actually enhanced his chances of winning. If he had chosen someone different, one could postulate that McCain could have performed far worse on election day.

Isn’t it a bit ironic to warn against pointing fingers and infighting, and then engage in a steaming load of it yourself?

Where to begin.

Vice presidents do not win or lose elections, and experience was not a winning message in a year like this. Hillary Clinton can tell you how well experience worked as a campaign argument.

Ultimately, at the bottom of the “blame Palin” phenomenon is the assumption that things would have been better with a different nominee. Who, I ask, would have been a better nominee?

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