Palin needs to learn from Reagan

I guess most of you have seen the video or at least heard about Gov. Sarah Palin and her turkey farm visit. For those who haven’t, here’s the video:



Before showing the video, the Democrats at MSNBC decided to advise parents they might not want their children to see it. They also fogged out the decapitations of the turkey’s which were going on in the background.

That from a cable network which for years has telecast with no parent advisories horrific scenes of human carnage in Iraq and other parts of the world.

Then we have the NY Times editorial board which now has its own blog, The Board, at which the editors opined: - - -

We’ve differed with Sarah Palin a great deal on substance. We don’t agree with her hardline approach to the Iraq War, her harsh anti-government rhetoric, and her style of negative campaigning.

But we also worry a bit about, how should we put it, the persona she has brought with her to national politics. We did not care at all for the swipe she took against community organizers at the Republican National Convention.

And then there’s this. You don’t have to be a huge animal lover to question why Governor Palin chose to be interviewed — while issuing a traditional seasonal pardon of a turkey — while turkeys were being executed in the background.

Folks, right after Palin made her impressive debut at the GOP convention, I said the overwhelmingly Dem MSM would set out to destroy her any way they could, lest she become a force in American politics.

What we’re seeing from the likes of MSNBC and the NYT’s editorial board is not concern for children and turkeys.

We’re seeing their “political death to Palin by a thousand cuts” strategy in action: attack Palin any time, any way.

I think Palin knew beforehand how the liberal/leftist MSM would “play” the interview. She even says during it she’ll probably be criticized “for doing this.” And she smiles when she says it.

I’m not ready to say Palin is “a future Reagan.”

But I’ll say this: Reagan understood he’d never get fair treatment from most of MSM.

Sure he was a very smart man, a skilled union leader, an extraordinarily gifted public speaker who wrote many of his own speeches, and a successful and popular two-term governor of the largest state in the Union.

But most MSM presented him as a lazy “B-movie actor” and “an amiable dunce.”

Reagan learned to laugh off the MSM politicking, smile and talk about what’s important.

I saw Palin do something like that in turkey farm video. She smiled and wasn’t at all defensive that she’d be the one in her family cooking the turkey. She seemed to relish telling the reporters that.

And as Reagan would have done in similar circumstances, Palin for the most part talked about things important to Americans – the economy, the safety of our troops in Iraq, the price of oil, and its impact on her state’s budget.

MSNBC, the NYT edit board and others overlooked all of that in order to inflict “a cut” on Palin.

In the future, when the turkey farm interview is brought up, I hope Palin reminds people of the important things she talked about during the interview and ever so gently, with a Reagan-like twinkle, adds that she doesn't remember much of what the turkeys said at the time.

Hat tip: Ed Morrissey