{"id":2306,"date":"2011-07-09T13:29:12","date_gmt":"2011-07-09T17:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/?p=2306"},"modified":"2011-07-09T23:56:28","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T03:56:28","slug":"theologian-ponders-why-the-left-so-despises-sarah-palin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/07\/theologian-ponders-why-the-left-so-despises-sarah-palin.html","title":{"rendered":"Theologian ponders why the left so despises Sarah Palin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
One would have thought that no Republican would be able to drive pundits toward the edge of sanity as deftly as George W. Bush used to, but Sarah Palin has surpassed him. She is as hated by the Left as viscerally as Bill and Hillary were by the Right. She\u2019s the latest in a string of conservative targets: Reagan, Bush, now Palin\u2014all cast successively as rightwing bumpkins du jour<\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

That’s the observation of theologian Peter J. Leithard, writing\u00a0for the scholarly website First Things<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of the horror is political, or claims to be. Andrew Sullivan, one of Palin\u2019s most relentless critics, attacks Palin in the name of conservatism. She is a radical masquerading as a conservative. She\u2019s unscrupulous, and a racist too. If Palin runs for President in 2012, Sullivan predicts, it will be ugly: \u201cShe will play the race card powerfully, often and repeatedly. . . . She will make the Willie Horton ad look like happytalk.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leithart is pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho, and Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at New St. Andrews College. His most recent book is Athanasius<\/em> from Baker Academic. He goes on to say:<\/p>\n

\n

Not content to attack Palin\u2019s positions and tactics, Sullivan resorts to conspiracy theories and long-distance psychoanalysis. Trump, er, that is, Sullivan<\/em> is a longtime un-birther, demanding proof that Palin is mother to her Downs Syndrome son Trig. Only in April of this year, following the publication of a lengthy Salon<\/em> investigative piece, did Sullivan grudgingly concede that it might possibly be probable that Palin carried and gave birth to her own son after all. Sullivan has described Palin as \u201cclinically deluded,\u201d paranoid and vengeful, \u201cpsychologically unhinged.\u201d She aims \u201cto win power by a populist appeal, backed by a virulent Christianism\u201d and leads a movement that aspires \u201cto smash existing institutions and to \u2018fundamentally restore\u2019 the American status quo before the Great Society, and even, the New Deal.\u201d Lust for destruction is \u201cthe core of today\u2019s \u2018conservative\u2019 movement\u201d\u2014thus says the \u201cconservative\u201d defender of same-sex civil marriage.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m here to assure the Andrew Sullivans out there that America has nothing to fear from Palin. Even if she becomes leader of the free world, she will cause barely a ripple in the surface of American culture. It\u2019s not just that her views are widely shared, or that she demonstrated uncommon courage, vision, and competence during her time as governor of Alaska. She\u2019s no threat because she swims so easily in the eddies of the Zeitgeist<\/em>. Rightwing she is on political hot buttons, but culturally she is as cheerily, effortlessly postmodern as they come. Palin is not a threat to the American way of life. She is<\/em> the American way of life, a.d. 2011.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One would have thought that no Republican would be able to drive pundits toward the edge of sanity as deftly as George W. Bush used to, but Sarah Palin has surpassed him. She is as hated by the Left as viscerally as Bill and Hillary were by the Right. 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