LEAVE SARAH PALIN ALONE!
Here’s a cute picture I got from a friend. Don’t know if its real or photoshopped or what the real story is but it reminds me of some shenanigans I was involved in in 1972, the year we crazies took over the Democratic Party in Alabama.
After the debacle of 1968, the party was abandoned by the white folk. Blacks were busy creating their own political blocs and divisions. And, so, in the resultant power vacuum Don Siegelman, Al Lapiere and other novices captured the state party apparatus.
In Mobile no one wanted to even look like they were campaigning for George McGovern. The Mims brothers were in full rebellion, refusing to mount even a token campaign. Helen Morgan, her daddy, a few others, and I volunteered to swim up the proverbial waterfall, launching the McGovern campaign here.
The local Republicans were trying to upset Senator John Sparkman by riding on Nixon's coattails. It would be a major victory to unseat this party stalwart and institution. They busily linked McGovern to Sparkman on all of the issues, never missing an opportunity to call it the “McGovern/Sparkman” ticket. Sparkman was about as anxious to be linked with McGovern as McCain welcomed Bush on the campaign trail.
We? Well we did our best to dance around the minefield, trying to run a professional campaign without experience, without the support of our local machine, without money, and with an abysmally unpopular candidate who we happened to love. A real Democratic Party dream team.
At some point - I’m guessing it was after McGovern gave some heckler the finger and told him to kiss his ass – we went to a Sparkman breakfast at the Admiral Semmes. We sat there and fumed as Sparkman spoke. He didn’t just distance himself from McGovern, he did everything but endorse Nixon. We came back to the office completely pissed.
I went to our portable sign outside and put “VOTE THE MCGOVERN/SPARKMAN TICKET” on it and then called the local GOP office to tell them what I had “just seen at the McGovern office.” Ann Bedsole showed up shortly thereafter to take pictures. I kidded with her, letting her know that it was an orchestrated payback from us. I even helped her take the pictures. We got chastised by the state office and soon agreed with them that we had acted selfishly and impolitic just to make a point and took our sign down but, secretly, we were glad we made our point.
Political campaigns are still run by people who react in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons. After these last two contentious political years, the paradigm for gauging political contentions should be obvious: delve beyond what someone says something means but first, check to see if what they said was said is itself accurate. For varying reasons people are eager to pile onto Sarah Palin on the basis of “something” coming from “somebody”, third-hand through a journalist. Somehow, that’s seen as gospel. No matter that we know that McCain’s campaign was high jacked by the same party hacks who have years of shady history behind them, that there were divisions within the GOP establishment as well as within each contender’s ranks that constantly showed turmoil and that there is something out there called “the base” (“the lowest”) driving their party to all sorts of suicidal distractions.
I think Palin is a lightweight and that given enough rope she will hang herself. I hope she takes the GOP down with her. But I think that she deserves to be treated in the same way we wanted our candidate to be treated. With respect and with the accurate assessment of what she herself claims, not by some amorphous Rovian whisper campaign that is being directed by who knows who.
(Photo courtesy Tom Cooksey)
