We already know what a schmuck she is. Today Palin proved herself to be a coward.
After the Tucson shooting, Palin offered a pro-forma statement of "condolences," that even conservative thought leader David Frum agreed was anemic at best. Worse, she issued the statement on her Facebook page. She didn't even have the grace to video tape a sincere message to those whose lives had just been devastated.
Instead, for several days she remained bunkered in an undisclosed location. Palin didn't even have the courage to go on live television in the bosom of her greatest apologists at Fox News. Like a vole, she exchanged a short burst of defensive tweets with Glenn Beck. She didn't even call in to his show so that America and the victims could hear her voice.
If your response to a tragedy is to duck and cover, you are not a leader.
Like most demagogues, she is first concerned with self and the appearance of control, so today -- five days after the tragedy -- she filled the gaping silence from Camp Palin with a stilted seven minute video stunt that she, again, posted on Facebook. This tactic insulated her from any direct challenge. Apparently she's now even afraid of the softball questions. (Her hardest hitting interview in months was with that vaunted journalist Mary Hart in a three-day puff piece on Entertainment Tonight.)
Yesterday, both Frum and his conservative colleague Andrew Sullivan of Atlantic Monthly called out Palin and the entire conservative establishment in their blogs. They corrected the record and provided proof that violent rhetoric is not just a flight of fringe fantasy:
"For years now, this kind of thing has become commonplace at the very top of the conservative political apparatus, and because the invocation of violence in a political context is inherently corrosive of democratic values. When you add to this a party committed to the use of military force as almost a first option, and to torture as a legal method of interrogation, it is irresponsible not to worry about where this is headed."
Simply stated, if you can't face questions over your own rhetoric and behavior, you are a coward.
It is with either high irony or rank hypocrisy that in her video diary, Palin chose to quote Ronald Reagan saying, "It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."
Yes, it is Sarah. That includes you.
Throughout her video, she not only proved that she does not deserve the adoration of her minions, but she further fanned the flames of violent rhetoric by trying to incite the pitchfork-bearing mob with the term "blood libel."
Well, I guess she would know about "blood libel," since she is one of the first to take the opportunity to sling it. Remember when she ran around the nation claiming that candidate Barrack Obama was palling around with terrorists? The United States Secret Service directly tied her rhetoric to a dramatic rise in death threats against Obama and his family.
Yep. Sarah Palin is a schmuck and a coward.