Nina Stone: The media hasn’t always hated Sarah Palin

Nina Stone at Alaskans4Palin has written an excellent media roundup, including videos, about the positive relationship the press had with Governor Palin before the 2008 election. Here are some excerpts from her article. You can read the rest of the article and view the videos here.

 

Palin and the Media: A Dying Fish or Media Flip-Flop

Friday, March 25, 2011

Posted by Nina Stone at 1:04 PM

It could be said that the media is like the proverbial fish out of water flopping about in the throes of death desperate to disparage and malign Sarah Palin. Let’s put them out of their misery, shall we, with a great big hammer of truth right between the eyes.

Here’s the truth.

The media hasn’t always hated Sarah Palin.

In fact, before she was tapped to run as John McCain’s VP, they seemed to think she was a-okay. Instead of the constant spinning and outright hatred that is now being vomited 24/7 by narcissistic journalists who wouldn’t know truth if it slapped them in the face, the media used to be eager to hear what she had to say. Heck, they would even conduct complete interviews without cutting a single word!

Alaska Business Monthly interviewed Sarah Palin in the early months of 2007 shortly after she became governor. She answered questions concerning education, environmental issues, the war in Iraq, ethics reform, the natural gas pipeline, and why she vetoed the bill that sought to block the state from giving public employee benefits, such as health insurance, to same-sex couples. She also addressed the concerns of high unemployment in the rural villages, as per the quote below.

“As the ‘First Dude,’ one of Todd’s big focuses is on work force development. Especially in rural Alaska, we need to make sure that our young people have opportunities. The fact that we import such a large percentage of our work force is a tragedy. There are great blue-collar jobs here that pay a lot of money, and we’re flying people in from Outside to take them, when we have 80 percent unemployment rates in the villages. We need to provide our own people with the opportunities to gain skills, and to learn a strong work ethic.”

Oops! Another myth dispelled! She obviously does care for the fate of the rural villages and their peoples! Read the full interview here.

[…]

The Weekly Standard, July 16, 2007 offers high praise in their article, calling her “a politician of eye-popping integrity.” Wow! Hard to believe, isn’t it? Here’s a quote from the article:

“It’s not just that she’s pretty and young,” says (pollster Dave) Dittman. “She’s really smart. And there’s no guile.” (emphasis mine)

Read the full article here.

[…]

On May 15, 2008, KTUU Channel 2 News reported fairly on the popularity of Governor Palin. It seems that Alaskan were still quite sweet on Sarah even right before she was picked by McCain. Her popularity rating when she was first elected governor was in the 90’s and as of this story release, she was still enjoying a rating of 86%, which was something unprecedented, according to Jennifer Duffy, Senior Editor of The Cook Political Report.

[…]

After the election, Rebecca Palsha with KTUU Channel 2, an NBC affiliate in Anchorage, was interviewed by MSNBC about Governor Palin. It seems as if she couldn’t find anything bad to say. In fact, she had this to say,

“You know the governor really hasn’t had that many controversies in Alaska so far.”

[…]

It’s apparent that before the media was against her, they were for her. So why have they so viciously turned on Governor Palin? That answer I do not know, but I suspect it has something to do with small petty minds, jealousy, hatred for the truth, and a liberal agenda that is being pushed at the behest of a mack daddy government.

AWR Hawkins – WWPD: What would Palin do?

– by Josh Painter
*
In a Pajamas Media commentary, AWR Hawkins counts the ways our republic is headed for the cliff under an Obama presidency which is arguably even more disastrous than that of Jimmy Carter: high gasoline and diesel prices are up, rising food prices, record high foreclosures, an unemployment nearly twice that under Bush, a mountain of debt and a devalued dollar. Meanwhile, the president is clearly in over his head as he apologizes to our enemies, snubs our allies and pursues aself-contradictory foreign policy. None of this has gone without notice from Sarah Palin, and Hawkins figures it’s a good time to ask the question: What would Gov. Palin do if she were President Palin?

In addition to an America-first policy toward energy, Palin believes that reducing the size of government and the taxes levied on Americans is a common-sense way to make sure hard-earned dollars stay in the hands that earned them. It’s also the surest way to unleash the creative spirit of America’s best: a spirit currently shackled by the debt and myriad of regulations the Obama administration has placed on the backs of citizens of all walks of life.

[…]

Obama’s current foreign policy missteps and hesitancy in using the military to crush terrorists wherever they hide would also change under Palin’s watch. She has made it clear that she would not hesitate to use the military to keep Americans safe. And as for fighting terrorists, she has expressed her strategy via a simple Cold War maxim: “We win, they lose.”

Those who have paid attention to Palin’s words and deeds as governor of Alaska, Republican vice presidential candidate, and the mother of a combat soldier (her son Track served a tour in Iraq) must have noticed that she has backbone. When she talks about national security she exhibits a decisiveness and determination far removed from the Jimmy Carter-style approach of Obama. She is far more reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher or even Ronald Reagan in this area.

Our country’s relationship with Israel is but another area in which Palin would usher in a complete reversal of the policies we’ve seen under Obama. Whereas the current administration has been markedly anti-Israel, Palin would not only support Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorist threats (like those coming from Hamas), but would encourage Israel to be unapologetic in doing so.

She’s already on record saying Israel apologizes too much.

[…]

I can’t help but think that somewhere, somehow, Reagan is smiling.

[More]

Cross-posted from Texas for Sarah Palin

– JP

Gallup Shows Support For Palin Grouping Rises Whilst Romney Declines

Once again the media, in their  haste to write Sarah Palin off as a presidential candidate have, for the most part completely misread the latest Gallup poll which showed Palin dropping back to 12 % from 16% amongst GOP preferences. Firstly here are the results of the aggregate polls from February 8th

The Real Clear Politics polling aggregate of 8 major polling firms shows, as I have been regularly promoting that the combined Palin/Huckabee support amongst GOP voters is up to more than double that for Romney who is the next highest choice.The RCP average for Palin/Huckabee is 35.3% and for Romney it is 18.8%. This result is perfectly in line with the 33%-40% that the Palin/Huckabee support level has been running at for months as set out previously.

If we look at the current Gallup polling we see the following:

Firstly Palin’s result is within the normal margin of error and could be 16% but if we take it at face value we find the Huckabee/Palin support at  31%. What has happened  to affect this is the 5% of support for Bachman who is the current media darling (this changes almost  daily). It would be expected that her 5% has come from Palin’s support or, to put it another way, if she had not announced an interest in running the majority of her support would go to Palin.

Thus according to the Gallup poll, the forces represented by Huckabee/Palin Bachman garner 36% whereas Romney’s support has fallen from 18.8% to

15%. It is clear, as poll after poll has consistently shown that the grass roots wants a true conservative candidate.

Bachman stands no chance whatsoever to win the nomination. The above results show it is to be decided by what Mike Huckabee does. the Gallup analysis shows that if he does not run his supporters would go, in the main to Palin and she and Romney would be running neck and neck.

If that was the case then the early primaries of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina might be decisive. The odds are,given the of those states, that Palin would win two out of the three and be well on  her way to the nomination.

Original Post At: M. Joseph Sheppard’s “A Point Of View”

Benyamin Korn: Republican Jewish Coalition has no quarrel with Sarah Palin

In this excellent article, Benyamin Korn, director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin and JewsForSarah.com corrects the impression that David Frum sought to achieve with his controversial remarks. 

Republican Jewish Coalition has no quarrel with Sarah Palin

Posted On March 26 , 2011

Conservative Girl with a Voice has a lively post taking “liberal Republican” David Frum to the woodshed for his recent column on CNN.com (quelle surprise!) trashing Sarah Palin. Frum – it’s ironic, his name means “religious” in Yiddish – deserves a spanking, but not quite for the reasons CGV inveighs against him.

CGV approvingly cites talk host Mark Levin that Frum is a “disgraceful, petty, Palin-obsessed Washington-insider.” And Frum does represents a resolutely left-leaning tendency within Jewish and general GOP circles. But Frum’s real sin here is that his CNN column was calculated to give the impression that there is bad blood between Gov. Palin and the Republican Jewish Coalition – a national grass-roots organization of 60,000 members.

This is a sly implication which most emphatically is not true, though our friend Sheya at Conservatives4Palin may be forgiven if he snapped at Frum’s bait. Nowhere in Frum’s column did he do the decent thing and indicate that he in no way spoke for the RJC, though he is indeed one of its 40 national board members, and also sits on the board of its think-tank, the Jewish Policy Center. Rather, his column was clearly calculated to convey the opposite, that his beef with Palin was actually RJC’s.

I knew we had trouble when my 16-year-old son, who attends a centrist, community Jewish day school, popped the question to me during Tuesday morning carpool: “Abba, why is Palin picking a fight with the Jewish Republicans?” Sputtering out my coffee, I attempted to calm myself and asked how he came to think such a thing, though of course I already presumed the answer. “Well a friend gave me this article . . .” “You mean from CNN.com?” “Well, yes, how did you know?” “Let’s just say I already wrote to the author asking him how he could write such a thing . . . “

Luckily, I was rescued later in the week by an elder statesman of the Jewish conservative movement, who told me to forget about Frum and concentrate on building a relationship between the RJC and Sarah Palin. “Articles come and go,” he advised, “but the important thing is that she deserves a fair hearing by the RJC as would any serious Republican contender.” I thanked him for helping me to stay focused on the big picture, and he was gracious enough to let on that he had learned over the years by making the same mistake.

The good news is that both the RJC and the good folks at SarahPac are on the same page. Long-time RJC director Matt Brooks was pro-active in contacting SarahPac to assure Gov. Palin’s team that Frum’s trouble-making was in no way at the behest of RJC leadership. At the same time, Mr. Brooks included an item in the RJC’s national newsletter praising as “entirely accurate” Gov. Palin’s “harsh criticism” of President Obama’s latest lame statement on Israel – this time in response to Wednesday’s terror-bombing at Jerusalem’s central bus station. (Gov. Palin had scored the President’s false moral equivalence between Jewish victims of Arab attacks, which purposely target civilians, and Arab civilian victims of Israeli military reprisals, which do everything possible to avoid civilian injuries. And thankfully, both the British and German foreign secretaries, as well as outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in their own post-bombing statements, contradicted the President’s “all-sides-are-to-blame game” by simply upholding Israel’s right and need to respond with force.)

Bottom line: Frum acted irresponsibly; what matters is good will between the incumbent GOP vice presidential nominee and the growing movement of Republican Jews. When Gov. Palin returns to Israel as she said she intends in the coming months, this time on more than a brief personal stopover with her husband, Americans of all faiths will get a better appreciation of Mrs. Palin’s deep respect for the little country in a dangerous neighborhood which she often refers to as “America’s treasured ally,” and the “touchstone” of our “Judeo-Christian civilization.”