Marjorie Dannenfelser on Sarah Palin
Marjorie Dannenfelser is the President of the Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund and Co-Founder of Team Sarah. She put out the statement below.
Sarah Palin
“With the entire federal government under the control of one political party that is hostile to our values, clearly the women of Team Sarah face an intense battle on many fronts. If Governor Sarah Palin’s historic candidacy proved anything, it is that women can meet these challenges without sacrificing their femininity. And thanks to Gov, Palin’s leadership, there are more women in this battle than ever before. The very women whom the women’s movement had convinced were invisible now know their power.”
Well said.
Unfortunately, in the end, we also saw the visceral hostility towards a woman who exhibited the qualities not valued by the left. I have never seen a candidate treated with such aggressive efforts to discredit her, belittle her and spin her to be just ‘the little woman’. She’s anything but the way she has been portrayed in the media.
The talking heads are even debating whether she hurt or helped John McCain’s ticket. I don’t hear anyone questioning that about Joe Biden even though he told the country that Obama was not ready to lead. How can anyone question the excitement and energy Palin brought to the ticket? It was the perfect Presidential ticket in many ways.
Unfortunately, Sarah Palin took the wind out of the Obama campaign’s sails. She grabbed headlines and the country was enthralled. They had to get rid of her. They, the media and the Obama machine, went to work and did everything in their power to destroy her.
It is dumbfounding that exit polls showed that people said they felt McCain and Palin were more closely aligned to their own values, but still voted for Obama. People said they felt safer with McCain as President, but still voted for Obama. People said they felt Palin was better prepared to be President than Joe Biden, but still hammered us in the media that she was not prepared and still voted for Obama.
Palin was raked across the coals and worse, her family were raked across the coals. But people say that McCain ran a ‘dirty’ campaign. The media told us he did and apparently people believed that instead of seeing the horrific things that were done and said about Palin.
It was also astonishing that more women voted for Obama. I know that women tend to be harder on other women, but that was hard to understand. Jealousy? Distrust of a female in power? Self hatred? A need to be subservient to men?
Perhaps its a basic dislike of a woman who is strong and powerful but maintains her femininity.
We have missed an opportunity to put REAL change in Washington. We had two people who were willing to put honor and integrity and love of country above their own political careers. And that cost them the election. They didn’t wallow in the gutters with the opposition who was willing to attack them on every level … personally, professionally. The media took the accusations and ran with it.
Real change would have been ethics in politics. Instead, we have the same, someone who asks for more pork than another Senator, who owes political favors and who is willing to do anything to win.
McCain would have been a great President. He would have kept us safe and would have used his power in an ethical, responsible manner. Sarah Palin would have represented our country with dignity and grace as a Vice-President.
Now we can only pray that nothing happens to Obama, because then Joe Biden would be President and that is an even more discouraging thought.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Perhaps its a basic dislike of a woman who is strong and powerful but maintains her femininity.
This absurd, wounded battecry from the rightwing defending their Joan of Arc is becoming hilarious.
Could it be that it has nothing to do with “femininity” at all, but retrograde/extremist policies, multiple ethics issues, pathological lying on the stump, and ratcheting up the worst elements of the Republican base to get votes?
Could it be that people voted on actual issues instead of skin color and body parts?
Is it that hard to believe that someone who seems to have ongoing problems expressing herself in basic English was rejected by the voting populace?
You Palinoid die-hards on the right are becoming the very shrill, sexism-whining people you’ve obsessively put down liberal women for, since the 60s.
If you want to know why your favored candidate was rejected, you ought to take a look at yourselves…you’re a laughingstock.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Wow – you just proved my point.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:57 am
BTW – now that your party is in power, you are going to have to get used to the responsibility that comes with power. That means you have to stop your shrill, whining and obsessive put downs of center-right people.
I bet that hurts.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I bet that hurts.
LOL
Oh yeah, righwing mama. Come and make it hurt, before we get that chance to take away your guns and give all your money to The Blacks for reparations.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Wow we have some real mud slinging going on here. Serious, people need to grow up and start acting like adults. I am not so sure about the strong femininity of Palin but she held in the tears last night and didn’t give the femininity any more ammunition against her. I think we will probably be hearing a lot about Palin in the days to come. And who knows maybe our next step as a nation is to put a women in the White House.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Sarah Palin represents everything the feminist establishment has labored towards for decades. Her real flaw? No ‘D’ after her name, for that high crime she was condemned by so called feminists and eviscerated in the media.
Despite this all out assault on this remarkable woman and capable politician, the real losers in this race were the constituents of the so called feminist establishment. Among her many accomplishments, Sarah exposed the hypocrisy and jackbooted dogma of the feminist movement. For that, she will always be a hero to real women across the globe.
I hope she will soon move to become Senator Palin in DC, giving her daily exposure to the public and teaching the Senate the meaning of’Barracuada’!
November 7th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Thank You so much for supporting a responsible and wonderful woman. I will do all I can from this day forward to restore DECENCY to the America that i love.
November 8th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Sarah is beautiful, smart, conservative, has a lovely family and is successful in her own right! What a combination. We can only hope she would want to run again after the unfair bashing she continues to receive from the lame drive-by media. The liberal Dems can only wish they had someone to compete with her.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:05 am
can we take sarah and split our goverment troops and country in half. i am finding it hard to raise a moral family in this libral world i need conservatism fast – would we be to do this – civil war?
November 8th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Sadly, Sam, Skye and fancy: it’s Faux Noise that is so-called “bashing” her, the same news network she so often quoted in her bashing of President Elect Obama, and the spokespeople for the RNC.
Say it with me everyone…P-r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t E-l-e-c-t O-b-a-m-a, who never once stooped to the level of the McCain campaign and Sarah Palin’s own redmeat drippings she slagged through her rallies.
No, Sarah Palin is a victim of her own success…and it’s the conservatives who are turning on her; the “liberals” have nothing to do with the flogging she’s getting from her own party.
What’s interesting is, the same things I’m supposed to be so jealous of as “a liberal woman” are precisely the things we all admire in Sarah Palin – she’s sexy, she wears her good looks on her sleeve, she’ll get in anybody’s face, and dares anybody on any end of any political spectrum to give a damn. I think it’s going to do a lot for women in politics in the coming generation, and I think it’s great.
Unfortunately for her, Americans rejected her ideological extremism, gun nuttery, whacko witchhunting bishop, and fake hockey mom rhetoric, all while wearing $200K worth of clothes.
We will continue to reject the hypocrisy of far right conservatism, in what ever guise you rightwing scum try to package it.