The conservative magazine The Weekly Standard let the founder of a Sarah Palin advocacy group called “Team Sarah” write an article about the state of Palin’s image in America, which is an awful lot like commissioning the head of GM to write an unbiased evaluation of the auto industry bailout. And in a real shock, the Standard writer concludes Palin’s “popularity is undimmed.” In fact, she compares Palin to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Despite the best efforts of the media, left-of-center feminists, and a brigade of political elites, including more than a few Beltway Republicans, to write obituaries for Palin’s national political career, she continues to be the second biggest phenomenon of the 2008 election cycle, behind only the president-elect….
Some of the most eloquent [Palin supporters] are women ecstatic over the new brand of feminism Palin represents: populist and pro-life. There is no other woman on the national political stage like her–and hasn’t been in recent times. To whom could she be compared–Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein? She doesn’t begin to fit this cookie-cutter model of pro-choice, pro-gender-quota woman in politics that left-feminism has served up.
But Palin has forebears in American politics. She looks a lot more like the early suffragists than anyone on the national stage now, especially in her pro-life stance. Susan B. Anthony, for whom my organization is named, for instance, called abortion “child murder.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton called it a sickening symptom of women’s mistreatment: “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women to treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
(The writer also notes that part of Palin’s appeal is that “she likes being a woman.” This is an important point because, as you know, all female feminists on the left hate themselves.)
Of course, this is the sort of article you would get from an admitted Palin supporter whose only reporting appears to have been talking to or observing other Palin supporters. It gets the state of Palin’s national popularity exactly wrong. It is not “undimmed.” A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that while Palin is popular among this country’s diminishing set of self-identifying Republicans (73%-13% approval vs. disapproval rating), Palin’s overall popularity rating is a net negative, 35%-45%. You know what that means? Palin’s popularity is in fact very, very dimmed among Democrats and independents.
