{"id":15735,"date":"2010-11-30T07:23:45","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T13:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=15735"},"modified":"2010-11-30T07:23:45","modified_gmt":"2010-11-30T13:23:45","slug":"the-straw-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=15735","title":{"rendered":"The Straw Candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back during the 2008 campaign, I noted one of the immutable truths of American politics; the only reason the institutional left ever builds up a Republican candidate is to tear them right back down.<\/p>\n<p>The classic example, of course, was John McCain; the left spent the better part of a decade solemnly declaring that &#8220;McCain is the good Republican&#8221;, willing to &#8220;compromise&#8221; \u00a0&#8211; praise that Mac curried aggressively. \u00a0But once Mac became an endorsed candidate, the knives came out; the &#8220;moderate&#8221;, &#8220;post-partisan&#8221; McCain was suddenly &#8211; and had always been &#8211; an &#8220;extremist&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Is the left trying to set up Sarah Palin in the same way?<\/p>\n<p>Noel Sheppard at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/noel-sheppard\/2010\/11\/28\/chris-matthews-flatteringly-compares-sarah-palin-bill-clinton\">Newsbusters has a theory<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Would you ever in your wildest dreams imagine Chris Matthews flatteringly comparing Sarah Palin to former President Bill Clinton?<\/p>\n<p>During a lengthy opening segment about Palin&#8217;s political future on the syndicated program bearing his name, Matthews said, &#8220;There\u2019s one unlikely Democrat you might compare to Sarah Palin when it comes to being a natural: the generally incomparable Bill Clinton&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And why would Tingly do that?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After all, it&#8217;s got to be one way or the other: media live to build people up and\/or knock them down. We&#8217;ve grown so accustomed to the latter with their treatment of Palin that we haven&#8217;t considered the alternative.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this could all backfire miserably since the more attention they heap on Palin, the more folks currently with a negative opinion of her might change their minds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a little early to speculate about 2012.<\/p>\n<p>But not about the left and media&#8217;s (pardon the redundancy) manipulation of public opinion&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back during the 2008 campaign, I noted one of the immutable truths of American politics; the only reason the institutional left ever builds up a Republican candidate is to tear them right back down. The classic example, of course, was John McCain; the left spent the better part of a decade solemnly declaring that &#8220;McCain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15735"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15770,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15735\/revisions\/15770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}