Michelle McCormick was “working on a hellacious bar tab” in
Clive, Iowa, when I called her Wednesday evening to get her
reaction to the announcement that Sarah Palin will not run for
president. McCormick has spent months in Iowa as a volunteer leader
of the grassroots group Organize4Palin, and had every
right to be bitter about the long waiting game that led up to
Palin’s final “no.” Yet the 28-year-old Texan was cheerfully
drinking away her disappointment and still full of praise for the
former Alaska governor who inspired her.
“I keep telling people, no regrets,” said McCormick, who
left her job and moved to Iowa to work without pay on Palin’s
behalf. “I’ve had so much fun doing this — the people that I’ve
met and good friendships I’ve made — I would not trade that for
anything. Shoot — I got to meet Sarah Palin a couple of times.
Man, that was awesome…. We still respect Governor Palin and respect
her decision.… I will always respect Sarah Palin. Next to my mom,
she’s one of my biggest role models. I’ve had a wonderful journey
doing this.”
If McCormick did not fault Palin for the drawn-out “will
she or won’t she” drama that continued all summer and into October,
why should anyone else? Yet Palin’s announcement was an occasion
for some to mock diehard supporters like McCormick.
“I told you people she was not running,” Red State
editor-in-chief wrote in a Twitter
message Wednesday evening after Palin went on Mark
Levin’s nationally syndicated radio show to say she had decided
not to seek the presidency in 2012. In a subsequent message,
Erickson wrote:
“I won’t hold my breath for any apologies. LOL.” A CNN commentator
whose blog hosted Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential announcement
in August, Erickson had spent Friday posting a series of
sarcastic hourly front-page updates beginning in the pre-dawn
hours: “It is 6am ET. Sarah Palin has not announced
yet.”
Friday was the last day in September, a month that Palin
had previously mentioned as when she would make her decision, but
Erickson did not explain why he seemed so determined to alienate
Palin’s most loyal fans by mocking their hopes. One conservative
blogger, William
Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, cited Erickson’s comments as
evidence of “how disgusting our own party is, and what types of
creeps have influence.” Jacobson was one of many who had been
hoping Palin would seek the 2012 Republican nomination ever since
the end of the 2008 campaign, when Sen. John McCain electrified the
GOP grassroots with his surprise choice of Palin as his
vice-presidential running mate.
Palin herself expressed sympathy for her heartbroken
supporters. “I apologize to those who are disappointed in this
decision,” she told Greta Van Susteren in a Fox News interview late
Wednesday. “I’ve been hearing from them in the last couple of
hours, but I believe that they — when they take a step back —
will understand why the decision was made.” Palin said she had
reached her decision “after prayerful consideration and a lot of
discussion with the family.” She received messages of encouragement
from several leading conservatives, among them Michelle Malkin who
Tweeted,
“More power to you, @SarahPalinUSA,” and
included a link to a blog post where Malkin
wrote, “Sarah Palin will continue to be one of the nation’s
most powerfully effective voices for grass-roots
conservatism.”
It was Malkin who gave a name to the unique hatred that
liberals (and some Republicans) focused on the former Alaska
governor: “Palin
Derangement Syndrome.” Almost from the moment she was
introduced as McCain’s VP choice, Palin inspired lunatic reactions
from liberals, including Andrew Sullivan, whose blog repeatedly
speculated about the circumstances surrounding the birth of Palin’s
fifth child, Trig. But while liberals frothed in demented rage,
Palin quickly became a favorite of conservatives, and boosted the
GOP ticket’s poll numbers. The first time I covered her on the
campaign trail in the small town of Lebanon, Ohio — where hundreds
gathered in a drizzling rain to see her — I dubbed her “Sweetheart
of the Heartland.” Even after the collapse of the Republican
campaign due to McCain’s panicked
reaction to the Wall Street crisis, Palin remained popular
enough to cause
Pennsylvanians to line up in the cold to see her in late
October.
Her popularity suffered from relentless attacks by a
hostile media, and when Palin pointed out the unfairness and
inaccuracy of journalists who were “just makin’ up stuff,” critics
accused her of “whining.” Many in the GOP Establishment —
including some members of McCain’s campaign staff — set out to
make Palin the scapegoat for the 2008 defeat. Liberals in Alaska,
seizing on an ethics law that Palin had helped enact, used it to
lodge an endless series of unsubstantiated charges against her,
forcing her to resign the governorship midway through her first
term — and then called her a “quitter.” And then, as if to add
insult to injury, journalist Joe McGinniss moved in next door to
the family to write a book so full of baseless gossip that even the
liberal New York Times disdained it as shoddy.
As her enemies exulted in the wake of Palin’s announcement
Wednesday, pundits quickly turned their attention to which of the
2012 presidential candidates would gain most from her decision not
to run. “My guess is that [Herman] Cain benefits the most from her
absence,” wrote the mysterious
Allahpundit at the popular Hot Air blog. “Like her, he’s a
Beltway outsider, and like her, he seems like a real person, not a
talking-points machine.… Authenticity has always been key to
Palin’s appeal among her supporters and that’s Cain all over.”
Palin herself praised the Atlanta businessman on Van Susteren’s Fox
News show, saying she was “intrigued” and “impressed” with Cain’s
“business acumen” and “up by the bootstraps” success.
The 2012 campaign will now go on without the Republican
Party’s biggest political star, who as recently as Labor Day
drew
hundreds to hear her speak in Manchester, N.H., where the crowd
chanted, “Run, Sarah, run!” Like her enemies — now deprived of
their pet scapegoat — Palin’s supporters will have to look
elsewhere for inspiration. In Iowa, where Palin’s disappointed
volunteers gathered in a bar to share their sorrow, Michelle
McCormick said she wasn’t planning to join any other campaign, but
would return to Texas. “I’m anxious to get back to work and get my
paycheck,” she laughed, and pondered a worst-case scenario for next
fall’s election. “Truth be told, if it comes down to RomneyCare vs.
ObamaCare in 2012 — good God, that’s gonna be rough.”
