Peggy Noonan who has been bought by MSNBC again trashes Sarah Palin and then falls on her sword….mpress

stopglobalaming- Peggy Noonan, a person whom I respected up until she was caught lying to her readers in a hot mic incident, digs herself a bit deeper into her hole with her own readers with her latest piece, “Palin’s Failin’.” The subtext of her article is succinctly expressed in her subtitle: “What is it she stands for? After seven weeks, we don’t know.”

After a few more paragraphs of bashing Governor Palin and the barefoot rubes who are ignorant enough to vote for, let alone identify with, someone who is clearly too vulgar and inexperienced for the likes of the ultra-sophisticated beltway political scene, Peggy Noonan tops off an already bitter tirade with an uncharacteristically self-righteous, yet oddly tangential crescendo:

I gather this week from conservative publications that those whose thoughts lead them to criticism in this area are to be shunned, and accused of the lowest motives. In one now-famous case, Christopher Buckley was shooed from the great magazine his father invented. In all this, the conservative intelligentsia are doing what they have done for five years. They bitterly attacked those who came to stand against the Bush administration. This was destructive. If they had stood for conservative principle and the full expression of views, instead of attempting to silence those who opposed mere party, their movement, and the party, would be in a better, and healthier, position.

At any rate, come and get me, copper.

Ok, I’ll bite. There is no reason that you (Peggy Noonan), Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, or any other member of the self-anointed conservative intelligentsia should be surprised at the amount of anger outpouring from your readership towards you when you write articles that appear to “pile on” an already struggling conservative campaign effort.

You dutifully qualify every criticism of Palin with some snippet along the lines of “I’m not doing this to get invited to all the cool parties,” yet the first thing you do once you’ve been booed off stage by your own readership is exactly that - you show up onto some sort of liberal haven like Hardball or The Colbert Report to apologize for how stupid and ignorant your own political movement is. You claim that your articles against the McCain campaign are written out of some concern that true conservative principles are dying, yet you express your disagreement by cheering on a man who supports out-in-the-open socialism. You all claim that you are wholly invested in traditional bread-and-butter conservatism, yet all of your actions contradict such claims.

Let me reemphasize one of Ms. Noonan’s lines:

If [high-profile conservative pundits] had stood for conservative principle and the full expression of views, instead of attempting to silence those who opposed mere party, their movement, and the party, would be in a better, and healthier, position.

Had I been given this snippet in isolation away from the rest of the self-righteous squawking screeched by our beloved I’d be inclined to think that Noonan and others believe that it would have been in the best interests of both the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement to fight Bush and push him further towards the right during his administration. I’m inclined to agree. However, if Noonan and her cohorts honestly believe that what they are doing right now in this election cycle is conducive to bringing about a conservative realignment amongst the Republican party then they are either being disingenuous or idiotic. I believe it’s the former.

If anything, the recent slide away by conservative megapundits away from McCain / Palin appears to be a rescue mission designed to salvage the credibility of conservative megapundits, not the Republican Party or the Conservative Movement. In fact, I think the deception on the behalf of these conservative pundits is a bit more duplicitous than they let on. While they claim to want a true conservative realignment of the Republican Party, they’re retooling their writing as though they expect the opposite to happen. It appears as though most of these longtime conservative pundits believe that a liberal realignment is what’s going to occur, and these conservative pundits are simply making a phased withdrawal away from their longtime readership towards a left-leaning future readership.

Filed under: Peggy Noonan