It's Becoming Clear: When it Comes to Slagging Conservatives, the Left is Losing its Touch

During the 2008 campaign, so much negative was said about Sarah Palin that even people who would ordinarily have supported her, if even half a second of news coverage had actually been about her views, record or planned policies, believed she was stupid.

Meanwhile, the press allowed Obama to get by with having known associations with Tony Rezko, William Ayers and the explosively racist "minister", Jeremiah Wright.

The 2008 campaign trail was a mud-slinging fest, or at least it was from one side. The McCain/Palin campaign, and by extension ALL Republicans and conservatives, were painted with a broad brush as insane, dangerous, angry, stupid, racist, sexist, facist Islamophobes who want nothing more than to impose a Christian theocracy in America and who deserved to be crushed.

And it worked. Obama became president and Sarah Palin, on whom most of the attacks were focused, ended up having to resign even as Alaska's governor, due to a concerted effort to destroy her with baseless "ethics violations" charges.

So...what happened? This month, TWO Palin-bashing books were released; Joe McGinnis's The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin and Deer in the Headlights: My Time In Sarah Palin's Crosshairs by Bristol Palin's baby-daddy Levi Johnston. No, I'm not going to link to them. If you're really that curious, google them.

But what's funny is I'm sure most on the Left expected these books to be massive best-sellers and would further bury Palin as an American pariah. After all, the reason Palin's two books, Going Rogue: An American Life and America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag were such best-sellers just has to be because Americans were just rubber-necking at the train-wreck that is her life, right? It certainly can't be because they wanted to read what she has to say. But she's a controversial figure, and that sells. So certainly books that trash her will sell too, right?

Wrong. The Rogue isn't even in the New York Times's top 50 (whereas Going Rogue topped it for weeks) while nobody even knows or cares that Levin Johnston wrote a book about anything. Even LEFTISTS of all people have been critical of McGinnis, while barely even ackowledging Johnston.

And there's good reason. McGinnis's book is a collection of unsourced, unverifiable yellow journalism that could grace the page of National Enquirer, and in fact many of the stories McGinnis collects initially appeared in the Enquirer. The Rogue is less a gritty exposé of Palin and more like a novel about the Palin the left WISHES existed. I've said before that the "journalists" of the left went after Palin with both barrels, determined to shame her on the National stage, and when they couldn't find anything to smear her with, they started making stuff up or taking very minor public gaffes of Palin and blew them up as if only a moron could possibly make such blunders.

You know, like pronouncing the word "corpsman" as "Corpse-Man", claiming to have visited "57 states" or signing the Royal British guestbook with the date of 2008 in 2011. Oh, wait, my mistake; those gaffes were committed by our genius president Barack Obama, the man who is reportedly so cool that there's nothing about him one can mock.

Palin's "gaffes" include supposedly believing America was founded in 1773 (when she was actually talking about the year of the Boston Tea Party, and was correct), supposedly believes we're allied with North Korea (when she actually meant South Korea, whom we are allied with, and immediately corrected her mis-wording without being prompted), or believing that Paul Revere warned the British (which he did).

But the left wasn't content merely to blow her very minor (especially when compared to genius Obama) gaffes out of proportion. They also managed to legally obtain tens of thousands of Sarah Palin's personal emails, which they were certain would blow the lid off the Palin family and expose Sarah Palin for the fraud they were all certain she was. The emails revealed nothing scandalous whatsoever. So many attempts to tear her down and she was still standing proud. I would imagine that many leftists were hoping that Joe McGinnis would finally deliver the crushing blow that would destroy her.

And this is what they got. That's the vaunted liberal establishment known as the New York Times slamming McGinnis's book. When even the New York Times is as unkind as that to a liberal writer trashing a woman the left loves to hate, you know you've lost. I gotta say I'm surprised. Oh, I'm not surprised that McGinnis's book amounts to salacious gossip intended to do no more than cement in the minds of people that already hate her that Sarah Palin is a fraud, a liar and a creep. That much was obvious the moment it was announced that McGinnis had managed to rent a home next door to the Palins. But McGinnis is no idiot, so I at least expected that he would manage to produce something that somebody, ANYBODY, could take seriously. I expected leftist establishments to be behind him 100% and to repeatedly assert that Palin's cover had been blown, and that anyone who doubted she was stupid, evil, narcissistic, hypocritical, etc. would now be "proven" wrong.

Instead, they recognize McGinnis's book for what it is. They realize that you can't just write down a sordid collection of rumors, many of which contradict each other, source them all to "a friend of the Palin family" or "someone who knew them well", etc. and expect anyone to believe it. You can't postulate that Palin was promiscuous while also stating that she was so sexually repressed she would barely let her husband touch her, or simultaneously claim that Palin is a fake Christian while also saying she is setting up a theocracy, or that everyone who knew her was aware of her promiscuity and drug use, etc., while also stating that it was a well-kept secret.

McGinnis's book, however, isn't even close to the only example of how the left's smear tactics are beginning to fail. The Tea Party continues to grow, despite the doubling down on Tea Party smearing the left is currently engaged in. Right now leftists look like the little boy who cried "racist!" as more and more average Americans realize that the Tea Party isn't a Klan-like group but is in fact the true voice of America. While Democrats in national and local Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus, etc. behave like a bunch of thugs, or petulant children, more and more people are understanding that the Tea Party is right; that they are not some racist group trying to get rid of Obama, but are instead a group thoroughly disgusted with the current state of congress and the actions of this administration, and are dedicated to getting rid of ALL those who are causing the current problem, including not only Obama, but anyone connected with this reprehensible party, black or white.

The insults are no longer sticking. The left can gang up on one woman, but when they try to apply the same tactic to literally EVERYONE who opposes them, their mud-slinging looks more and more hollow, and more and more people are understanding that the smears of the left aren't based on anything approaching reality, but are the schoolyard taunts of a failed administration that is scared they're actually going to lose.