Left sputters in going after Palin

By Bryan Fischer

Bottom line on Wednesday night's speech: The Democrats are in trouble — Gov. Palin doesn't hit like a girl.

While America's Big Media sputtered to find some way to attack Gov. Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention — leaving Sen. McCain's speech oddly anticlimactic — observers across the pond were suitably impressed.

The London Sun said Palin's speech was "simply stunning" and "has turned the election upside down." Her speech was "an electrifying mix of intelligence, passion, energy, optimism and plain speaking."

Of her speech — seen by 30 million voters — the Sun concluded: "She is popular with voters for the very reason America's snooty political establishment despises her: She isn't one of the Washington gang."

Meanwhile, locals in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska were expectedly jazzed. Said one, "[John] McCain needed her real bad. I wasn't even gonna vote for McCain until he picked Palin. Before that, conservatives didn't have a voice."

Still another said, "I was on the fence and now I'm blazing the McCain trail," while a 70-year-old man marveled at Palin's assertiveness. "She's like a moose going after a cabbage."

One columnist observed that "Sarah Palin has done in five days what John McCain has never been able to do — fire up the Republican Party's conservative base." The Wall Street Journal this morning compared her to Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady of Great Britain.

Big Media just couldn't figure out how to go after her. The Boston Herald was reduced to interviewing a hairstylist, who sniffed, about Gov. Palin's do, "It's about 20 years out of date. Which goes to show how off she might be on current events." There's penetrating political analysis for you.

Gloria Steinem, who should be celebrating the shattering of the glass ceiling but was instead morose and condescending, said, "Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton," and added, "She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger," which is perhaps the highest praise a pro-family conservative could hear.

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's wild-eyed pit bull, in responding to Palin's speech, was left mumbling, "People who like this sort of thing will find this ... the sort of thing they like."

And Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist, was so complimentary of her speech that Fox News' journalist Chris Wallace actually complained, saying something like, "I brought you on to say something critical. Don't you have anything critical to say?"

Palin's role in the campaign could be decisive. A recently released CNN poll declared that, based on its research, if evangelical voters had not voted in the last presidential election, John Kerry would have beaten President Bush 53-45.

NO QUESTION HER JOB WILL AFFECT HER FAMILY

It should be obvious that Gov. Palin's work as Alaska's chief executive, the energy that will be required of her on the campaign trail, and her responsibilities as vice-president if the GOP ticket wins in November have or will have an enormous impact on her role as wife and mother.

Every individual has a finite amount of emotional and physical energy and can only be in one place at one time. A wife and mother who is invested in other pursuits, no matter how worthwhile, has to divert time and energy from her children and family to do so. It's a simple fact of life that energy invested in working outside the home is simply not available to be focused on the home.

Even liberal commentators criticizing Palin have been forced to admit that men are different than women, and that fathers and mothers each contribute something unique and irreplaceable to the lives of their children.

That's why pro-family conservatives continue to believe that the optimum nurturing environment for young children is in a home where the mother, uniquely equipped by God to be a nurturer, is able to direct her best energies into shaping and molding their young lives and creating a stable, peaceful home for her family.

The Palins have obviously chosen a different path, and ultimately this is a decision that must be between a husband and wife and God.

If there was ever a time a wife, mother and family needed the prayers of the faithful, now is the time. Gov. Palin will not only have the challenges of balancing all the competing demands on her time and energy, she will have a relentlessly hostile media to face, a media that has already shown how low it's willing to go by attacking her 17-year-old daughter.

In our family, we made the deliberate choice for my wife to be a full-time nurturer and home-builder and have never regretted that decision. It's the path I recommended as a pastor to the young engaged couples I counseled in preparation for their wedding. Why bring children into the world, I would gently say, and then pay someone else to raise them?

As I wrote yesterday, Deborah was drafted into public service in ancient Israel, despite being a wife and mother, because the country desperately needed strong courageous moral leadership and the men of her day had been so neutered that they couldn't provide it. Things seem sadly similar in modern America, and thus evangelicals may come to see Gov. Palin as a Deborah for our day, or an Esther, another biblical heroine who was raised up, the Scriptures say, "for such a time as this."

There's probably little that's wrong with America that renewed courage and conviction in conservative males wouldn't fix, beginning with males in the evangelical church.

© Bryan Fischer