I have long been puzzled as to why “Outside The Beltway’s Doug Mataconis seems to have joined the ranks of the sufferers of Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS in extremis). On the surface his education, profession and general writing would seem to indicate a balanced person (allowing for a political emphasis which of course bloggers all are wont to).
Yet where Governor Palin is concerned he seems to go off the deep end, not only in a long series of attack articles about her, but also descending into utter condescension towards her (“when she is speaking you will find me out back at the bar”). It’s seven years for goodness sake, and Palin is not a candidate for office and seems unlikely to be one for the foreseeable future if at all.
Why then this seemingly odd fixation? A clue, perhaps, may have arisen from an article attacking Palin as some sort of Circe luring Libertarians to their doom upon the rocky shores of neoconservativism. Mataconis being not only a libertarian but a Libertarian having “proudly voted for Gary Johnson” as part of the genuinely 1% of such voters.
In an article by one Mark Alvarez at WEBCommentary the writer goes to great pains to warn his readers that the superficial siren song (or in a rather odd simile a “Trojan Horse”) of Palin towards the likes of Rand Paul, or any libertarian candidate in the GOP, will lure such hypnotized people to the fatal attractions of a Jeb Bush.
Sarah Palin: A neocon Trojan horse
Sarah Palin offers us the quintessential example of the bait-and-switch in a recent article. See: http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/59937/20151120/sarah-palin-voices-support-for-rand-paul-says-republican-voters-are-idiots-for-marginalizing-his-supporters.htm This article confirms my long held belief that Sarah Palin is a neocon Trojan horse.
I’ve said for some time that her role is to smuggle neoconservatism past the electorate by amalgamating it with germs of truth. She will do things like throw accolades in the direction of Rand Paul and Ron Paul in order to build rapport with liberty activists. Not that she offers us any insightful commentary on behalf of liberty. Giving accolades to the Pauls helps her establish pro liberty credentials, which she then uses to lead people straight into the arms of neoconservatives.
Notice how in this article she gives accolades to the Pauls as well as Jeb Bush and George W. Bush. Liberty voters are supposed to believe there’s some kind of equivalency between Rand Paul, Ron Paul, and Jeb Bush.
Well here’s my warning to the liberty voters: Like Obama, Sarah Palin is a menace to the Constitution. She is not a friend of liberty. There might be an inconsequential race where she endorses a good candidate. By inconsequential, I mean a race with a certain outcome, where her endorsement won’t change anything and she could even build rapport with liberty activists. Or it could be a race where if a liberty candidate does win, their solitary vote will be inconsequential.
But on consequential races, Sarah Palin backs neocons. She even endorsed a neoconservative, who worked for Bush, in a Republican primary race to try to unseat Congressman Walter Jones. Congressman Walter Jones has one of the most pro liberty and pro Constitution voting records on the Hill. He is like the closest thing to Ron Paul’s clone in Washington. Is it an accident that Sarah Palin backed a neocon primary opponent to Walter Jones?
Mark Alvarez
Expose 9/11
If this sort of thinking is widespread in libertarian circles, and has reached the likes of Mataconis, it would go a long way to explain the seeming inexplicable attacks on her-if it does.
The fact that the writer appears to a 9/11 conspirator might also go a long way to explaining the caution the wider voting public has to both Ron and Rand Paul’s candidacy and the Libertarian Party’s lack of any traction.
ADDENDUM
Credit where due; Doug Mataconis “Outside The Beltway” on Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting in relation to Gifford’s criminally insane attacker Loughner and the hate attack on Palin.
Extract:
This was not received with total acclamation by Palin supporters as this comment indicates:
My cynical guess is that his previous attacks on Sarah Palin were basically due to the threat that she posed as a potential candidate, since she would most likely have stopped a Rand Paul candidacy dead in it’s tracks…where it finds itself right now BTW.
Unfortunately, she would have been blamed for Rand’s failure to win, just as she’d be blamed for anybody else’s loss. For whatever reason she’s a convenient lightning rod and allows dishonest people to deflect the blame for lackluster candidacies on her presence instead of the candidate themselves.
The really sad thing? Think about how inclusive and gracious she is. She works to unite.
Mr. Sheppard is the proprietor of the blogs Point Of View and Palin4President 2016. He also writes occasionally for American Thinker and is a man of refined taste. Follow him on Twitter: @MJosephSheppard.
