Why They Hate Her

Jeffrey Bell dissects the many motivations and calculations of the Left in The Weekly Standard. A fascinating read that explains in greater detail the madness behind the sheer malevolence and contempt they hold for Sarah Palin. In one of the most fascinating paragraphs in an incredibly insightful piece, Bell addresses the unintended consequences of the vile media attacks that transformed her Wednesday night speech into must-see TV, crediting Sarah with the unique ability to acknowledge her adversaries' assaults with good humor, grace and confidence. He takes it a step further by drawing a comparison between Palin, Reagan and Roosevelt with whom she shares this gift, and then questions why it took the latter two politicians years to "earn" such animosity, while the Alaskan Governor accomplished this feat from the moment she took to the podium in Dayton:

For this quality to have even a chance to develop, there must be something real to serve as an emotional backdrop: disproportionate, crazy-seeming rage by one's political enemies. Roosevelt was on his party's national ticket five times and Reagan sought the presidency four times. Each became governor of what at the time was the nation's most populous state. It took Roosevelt and Reagan decades of national prominence and pitched ideological combat to achieve the gift of enemies like these. Yet the American left awarded Sarah Palin this gift seemingly within a microsecond of her appearance on the national stage in Dayton, Ohio. Why?

Bell goes on to describe the underpinnings of the Leftist movement in 1790's France with its drive to eliminate institutions such as marriage and family in order to achieve true "liberation." He takes us on a journey through the original feminist movement and its elevation of motherhood, and then onto Hugh Hefner, the turbulent 60's and our current PC culture. His concluding paragraph sums up in a nutshell the genesis of Leftist rage toward Governor Palin:

The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.