Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [116]
James Dobson was not so easily mollified, however. He vowed to sit out the election if McCain were nominated. “I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative,” he argued. “He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party.”42 Rush Limbaugh was even more alarmed, warning of a GOP takeover by Rockefeller elitists who disdained working-class Christian conservatives. He said:
The Rockefeller Republican wing of the Republican Party is doing everything it can to take over, to get rid of conservatism as a dominant force in the party for a whole bunch of reasons. They’re embarrassed of the pro-life community. They’re embarrassed when they have to go to Republican conventions and show up at cocktail parties with Billy Bob and Ellie Mae coming up from Mississippi and so forth, ’cause their wives, the guys, Republican guys, their wives henpeck ’em and give ’em all kinds of trouble for being in the pro-life party and so forth and so on. So the nomination of McCain here is basically an attempt to rid the Republican Party of conservative influence, as you can see by McCain consistently reaching out across the aisle to independents and Democrats.43
Faced with the risk of massive defection by the conservative base, McCain offered Limbaugh and Dobson the treat they were hungering for: Sarah Palin. Combining charisma, religion, and deep social conservatism with a wholesome small-town image, Palin was the perfect conservative candidate. “This is a very exciting and encouraging day for conservatives and pro-family activists. I am just very, very pleased,” raved Dobson. “If I had to go into the . . . voting booth today, I would pull that lever.”44 Rush Limbaugh gushed like a love-struck teenager:
Sarah Palin’s family, sitting there watching—the little seven-year-old Piper moistening her fingers and patting down the hair of the baby? Heart was going crazy. Mind was going nuts . . . This lady has turned it all around. And I’m here to tell you today that John McCain, from now on, on this program, regarding this choice, will be known as John McBrilliant.45
In addition to her conservatively correct policy positions, Palin knew how to play persecution politics. Taking a phrase from Glenn Beck, she described Greensboro, North Carolina, as one of “these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America.”46 Barack Obama of Honolulu and Chicago (and Kenya!) was not from such a wonderful little pocket; he was not like them. In another speech, Palin told supporters, “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America.”47 Barack Obama, Sarah Palin explained, believed in “spreading the wealth.” She didn’t say whose wealth Obama wanted to spread and to whom he wanted to spread it, but she told her audience what “Joe the Plumber” and “Ed the Dairy Man” thought of all this spreading: “They think that it sounds more like socialism.”cx48 Palin also would have liked to go after Obama’s Rev. Wright associations. She told conservative columnist Bill Kristol:
I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that—with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave—to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.49
But Palin’s greatest contribution to persecution politics was herself. Even as she surged out of the starting gate—before the disastrous Katie Couric interview or Tina Fey’s stinging impersonations—conservative columnist Bill Kristol predicted that the liberal media would persecute Sarah Palin. He wrote:
So what we will see in the next days and weeks—what we have already seen in the hours after her nomination—is an effort by all the powers of the old liberalism, both in the Democratic party and the mainstream media,