Let me get a couple of disclaimers out of the way first. I was not a fan of picking Sarah Palin to be the running mate of John McCain upon my second look at Governor Palin as a candidate. At first, I thought she was a great choice, having read an op-ed she had written in Investor's Business Daily about a year previously. Then I realized that she had only served as Alaska's Governor for about 18 months. My objection to Palin came only from her relatively short career in governance, and was based on nothing else. That being said, I have agreed politically with most of what she has had to say. I find the claim that Sarah Palin is an empty headed dolt to be laughable, and what's worse, fabricated start to finish by people who are afraid of her, and the change that she represents. I would also like to go on the record again, I believe that her resignation of her position as Alaska's Governor was a colossal mistake in judgement, no matter how impossible fighting those politically motivated ethics would have made tending to Alaska's business. I'll circle back to this bit later on.

Over the weekend I visited with friends in Columbus, Ohio. As we often do, we agreed to watch some of our favorite movies that we know the others in the group have not seen. To that end, I was asked to enjoy a movie entitled, "Game Change." I need a moment to let out a deep sigh. you see, I am not usually a fan of Conservative hit pieces masquerading as serious documentary.

I'm not going to bother you with a complete review of a movie that I consider to be one of the most amateurish political hatchet jobs ever committed to celluloid. I will instead only speak very briefly to the central premise of the movie, and then follow up with some points tangential to this premise that I feel are important.

The premise of the movie is this. Sarah Palin is a dolt of such epic proportion that it should be considered miraculous that she is capable of getting herself dressed each morning. Tying her own shoes is simply out of the question. This fact of her complete lack of intelligence escaped somehow the notice of not only the majority of Alaskans, who elected her Governor of their state, but also the notice of McCain's VP search committee, who only had a short amount of time to vet her. On top of being a completely self absorbed moron, Governor Palin is, "gasp," a Christian.

Face it, the, "all conservatives are brainless idiots," meme has been around for a long time. Gary Trudeau chose as the title of one of his Doonesbury collections, "In Search Of Reagan's Brain." What comes with believing that of course is a complete lack of curiosity. Reagan after all was one of our nation's greatest Presidents. He won the Cold War and triggered the collapse of the Iron Curtain. He guided an economic recovery that saw us rise from the ashes of Carter's Economic Malaise and became the single greatest period of prosperity in our nation's history. It lasted 28 years. Even with his legacy well entrenched, when Hollywood made the movie about him, James Brolin researched the role of Ronald Reagan and found him to be doddering old moron who allowed himself to be pushed around by his wife, and was also seemingly incapable of tying his own shoes.

So, when I saw the scene in, "Game Change." that showed Sarah Palin having trouble with the concept of the Queen of England not being in charge of British Government, a fact that I learned in the Fifth Grade, my curious nature immediately called baloney. I would have been able to believe that Governor Palin was not up to speed with the names and backgrounds of every political leader around the world, what the primary tenets of every player's political belief systems were, and perhaps that the McCain people felt she needed help in that respect, but when the movie made the claim that Sarah Palin did not know the difference between North and South Korea, I find that not only hard to swallow, but will go on record of accusing the film's makers of being purposefully dishonest expressly for the purpose of destroying the character of a person who's politics they disagree with. I will sate further that anyone incurious enough to not question this is the epidemic of political pestilence that threatens our nation's continued well being.

At one point of the movie, one good friend looked up and announced to the group that he found it scary that someone like this could be President one day, (an irony that I'll get to in a moment,) and indicated that he believed each and every word of the movie, completely ignorant of the possibility that much of it was probably fabricated fantasy of what life in conservative circles is like. Here is where I am forced to wonder if any reconciliation between our political divide is, or will ever be possible. Accepting the premise of this supposed based on reality story would mean accepting that Sarah Palin is in fact so stupid that she lacks the understanding of the slowest of junior high students. This represents a level of stupidity that would have to be readily apparent to anyone who would have bothered to engage her in any conversation immediately, but somehow managed to escape the vetting process, albeit abbreviated, by paid investigative professionals.

As I've said, I had read essays written by Sarah Palin long before she became the running mate of John McCain, and I saw actual evidence of someone who is not only intelligent, but actually quite well versed in those areas concerned with economics. But let's hit on another point here. Compare Sarah Palin's lack of gravitas in the foreign policy arena with what we've gotten from the President and his team over the last three years. This movie was not written and produced immediately after all, we were well into the Zero's term in office by the time this movie was released. The world outside of our borders is decidedly in worse shape than it was 45 months ago. The world is decidedly a more dangerous place for Americans to visit, our interests are decidedly in poorer condition, and our standing on the world stage is decidedly diminished. This is the backdrop which this hit piece on Governor Palin should be considered. My curiosity forces me to ask this question. What is the value of the supposed knowledge possessed by the self anointed elite class, if the application of their theories which worked out so well in the class rooms of our institutions of higher learning, led us to the place where we are today? The meme of all conservatives being dumb while all liberals are smart has been played in every movie coming out of Hollywood for decades now. Yet, the results of the application of those two disparate schools are crystal clear when looked at through the lens of history.

I need to face this fact, the liberals watching this movie with me will never ask the most basic introspective questions about their starting premises. The second question will never be asked. Nicole Wallace, a Republican operative, was one of the people responsible for providing much of the background information used in this movie. I'm going to paraphrase one of her quotes here, as to why she participated in this shameless hit piece.

I usually hate tell all stories, and have always felt that they were unfair representations of the facts as they actually happened, but I never want to see a situation occur again where someone is put on the ticket that has not been thoroughly vetted.

Apologies to Mrs. Wallace if I botched this quote, but I think I got the gist of it spot on. I will say that I completely agree with Nicole Wallace on this sentiment. But what lack of vetting are you speaking to? Sarah Palin's life was picked apart more thoroughly than a rectal examination. During the same election, the guy at the top of the opposition ticket still has yet to provide so much as a birth certificate. I am not one of the crazy birthers, but there is a point here. Zero vetting of Barack Obama took place anywhere. He had close associations to Van Jones, Bernadine Dhorn, William Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Communist Party U.S.A., Derrick Bell, Tony Rezko, Louis Farrakhan, and Jeremiah Wright. Not a single one of Barack Obama's childhood friends has been found, spoken with, nor a teacher asked what kind of a student he was. Teams of reporters flocked to Wasilla Alaska and published the most minor of ramblings of everyone in that town, even people who didn't know her. Her email accounts were hacked, and love letters between Levi and Brystol published.

Barack Obama has nominated known subversives for cabinet level positions and included those same groups of people in his Czar positions, which of course need no legislative oversight. We now have a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood serving as the number two person in our State Department, and all that group did was to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers and Defense head quarters about a decade ago. Yet, as a form of carrying out the effort to actively oppose any vetting of Barack Obama to asinine proportion, anyone who suggested that Barack Obama would be soft when dealing with Islamic extremists has been thoroughly smeared as a racist. So, if Nicole Wallace did say that she was performing some sort of public service by making sure that nobody ever again gets elected without being vetted, terrific. If she is putting forth the notion that Sarah Palin was somehow given a pass while we know all we need to about Barack Obama, she should be forever banished from human contact, never allowed to speak with human people again, she is too stupid to be allowed to attempt putting her own pants on.

We have real problems facing our country today. We need serious people to actually address these problems, and we have proven over the last 45 months that more gimmicks and obfuscation will not work. Unfortunately, the Republican Party is just as infected with leftists as is the Democrat Party. We need to rise above the influence the influence of the incurious dolts who will accept any premise spoon fed to them, no matter how idiotic. Never mind that calling conservatives stupid amounts to nothing more than an ad hominem attack. Rather than arguing against the specific statements that were made by Sarah Palin in this interview, it is merely easier to just call her stupid. In that way, no matter what she says, her points are simply discarded as not worthy of consideration. No, Sarah Palin did not have the foreign policy gravitas of somebody who served in our State Department. Then again neither did Ronald Reagan, or Richard Nixon, and they were simply our two greatest Presidents from a foreign policy stand point. Was Governor Palin guilty in this interview of trying to embellish her cred on foreign policy, certainly. That does not diminish the fact that mostly, what she said in the now infamous Couric interview would most certainly have us in a much better position in the world today.

Please give that interview another listen.

Governor Palin resigned her position of Governor due to a bevy of politically motivated ethics complaints filed by non Alaskan residents for no other reason than to make life difficult for the Governor. Alaskan law forces Alaskan officials to pay for their own legal defense. The charges, which were ultimately proven to be fabricated, each and every one of them, made it impossible to attend to the state's business. Sarah Palin resigned her position in order to best serve Alaska, rather than force Alaskans to suffer with a part time Governor while she fought a protracted legal battle. I have always considered this to be a mistake. These types of tactics will only multiply if not fought each and every time they are employed. Defeat of thugs using these types of tactics is the only way to keep this cycle from perpetuating.

Here by the way is the actual interview with Steve Schmidt after the book was written. Unlike the movie, or as represented in the book, Schmidt has mostly positive things to say about Sarah Palin, for instance this quote here, "had she not been on the ticket, our margin of defeat would have been greater than it was."

Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.