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Posted
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:21 PM
| By
Rachael Larimore
Not surprisingly, I had a different take on Elaine Lafferty's column in the Daily Beast. That's not to argue with Sarah or Emily or Ann, it's just that I was looking for something different. But before I get to that, what strikes me as interesting is the treatment that Lafferty is getting from some on the left. Didn't many on the left just hold up Christopher Buckley as a hero for his speaking "truth to power" in HIS Daily Beast column where he came out for Obama? And wasn't everyone horrified by the name-calling he got on the right? I was. So how is it different when Jezebel tells Lafferty to go perform an anatomically impossible task? Neither of our two major parties is perfect, and when prominent figures use their influence to criticize their parties and say "Hey, you're not listening to me," it should serve as a wake-up call. It should prompt debate and soul-searching that would make the party stronger.
But, as for my take own on Lafferty: I was amused that she was mock-horrified to be agreeing with Fred Barnes because I had just read Barnes' own Palin-is-smart column in the Weekly Standard. I've been torn up about Palin. My initial reaction was one of extreme enthusiasm, which quickly became tempered by a serious case of longing for Mitt Romney as veep when she bombed her big media interviews, which in turn became relief when she did so well in the debate with Joe Biden. Also, my concerns over her lack of experience did battle with my excitement that there was a strong, dynamic conservative woman putting herself out there and going for the brass ring. It worried me when conservative intellectuals started breaking ranks, but I couldn't help remember seeing all the women at a Palin rally I covered and how excited they were. And, no, they weren't all the bible-beating, evangelical, social conservatives that she's supposed to get so worked up. There was a young, kinda hippie-ish couple with three little girls in pink Palin T-shirts, middle-aged women with teenage daughters, women in business suits, and moms in track suits.
So when I see positive reaction from people who would not normally be inclined to like her, I'm grateful. And frankly, if Sarah Palin is as smart as the people who get to know her say, it's something we should all be happy about. Unless women want to have yet another skirmish over who gets to call themselves a feminist and fight over whether abortion is a litmus test, it's a positive that there are smart, powerful women on both sides of our great ideological divide, fighting for what they believe in and setting examples for the women in their parties.
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