How the Enemies of the Normal Are Destroying Obama

by Mark P. Shea - September 10, 2008

Reprinted with permission.

It is an old fact of Christian theology that concupiscence "darkens the intellect" – or, as I prefer to put it in more colloquial terms, "Sin Makes You Stupid."

The visceral reaction to Sarah Palin by the Enemies of the Normal in the Obama camp is a picture-perfect illustration of this.

From the instantaneous embrace of Trig Trutherism by Andrew Sullivan, Kossites, and various demented contributors to the official Obama Campaign site to the strange theories put forward that Palin is (wait for it) a pro-life hypocrite for not aborting Trig to the bewildered and panicky revelations that Palin is actually on record as praying for friends and being an average high school student, the sheer hatred and terror of the Normal from the manufacturers of Blue State culture is palpable.

Mark Steyn received an e-mail from right here in my home state, the Soviet Republic of Washington, that distills in chemical purity the heart and soul of the Abortion Party's real hatred for Sarah Palin:

This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains. And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.

There is more than the political to a remark like that. It's a spiritual and even demonic hatred, a Herodian hatred I'm not sure can be capped by mere appeals to prudence and reason by people in the Obama campaign who are nervously eyeing the polling data and seeing how the Palin Hate is playing with ordinary people.

Not that some people aren't trying to rein in the Enemies of the Normal before they permanently alienate swing voters and even fellow Democrats. Michael Moore (surprise!) recognizes the train wreck ahead if the Enemies of the Normal continue to try to win the election by indulging their freakish loathing of, well, most of their countrymen and women and their kids:

But before everyone gets all smug and self-righteous about the Palin selection, remember where you live. You live in a nation of gun owners and hunters. You live in a country where one out of three girls get pregnant before they are 20. You live in a nation of C students. Knocking Bush for being a C student only endeared him to the nation of C students. Knock Palin for having kids, for having a kid who's having a baby, for anything that is part of her normalness – a normalness that looks very familiar to so many millions of Americans – well, you do this at your own peril.

These are the words, not of somebody who actually likes all those normal people, but of somebody who is not so blinded by hatred of the Normal that he is willing to throw away an Obama victory just to have a spasm of emotional incontinence. He can see what guys like Steyn's correspondent cannot: that the Enemies of the Normal terrify and sicken ordinary folk.

It's no small part of why I and millions of other Americans really like Sarah Palin: She's not intimidated by losers who call Trig a "retard" and reduce her to a breeding animal (you know, self-described "progressives" and "feminists"). She's cool and confident and able to leave mukluk prints all over the face of such creatures without breaking a sweat. Who (besides that frightened loser and his ilk) can't love that?

Well, Andrew Sullivan for one. His response to Moore's very sound warning (a warning, mind you, echoing Obama's own rebuke to his disciples about making political hay from an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, given his own personal history) is to offer this steaming moose dropping of spin:

I'm not smug or self-righteous about this. I'm alarmed by what Charles Krauthammer has called

the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.

Maybe we're being picky, but you kinda want to know those kinds of things when someone could be president of the United States next January. Does the fact that we know nothing about her foreign policy views not worry anyone?

Ah! So it was his interest in policy that drove him to speculate on the parentage of Palin's children like a neo-Puritan Inquisitor and Ambassador from Pleasantville. Sure. I'm totally believing that.

Moore is right, and Sullivan and a lot of other Enemies of the Normal have indulged in precisely the behavior Moore warns against with the immediate lust to discuss not her policy but the most vicious rumors about her kids. The hatred of Palin among many in the Obama camp is, as I said, a pre-rational thing. And the swirling kaleidoscope of ex post facto rationalizations for the hatred (plus the flat dishonesty of stuff like Andy's "All I care about is policy" facade) is what is appalling ordinary people and inspiring them to say things like my blog reader who wrote:

And what would they say about me? 11 kids, one of them a "retard" (God how hard it is to type that), and one a disabled vet, and 4 grandkids. Yeah, I'm rankled.

These people could actually make me vote for McCain after all, just to spite them.

I've long believed this election was Obama's to lose. And if Obama can't restrain his worshippers from indulging this kind of filth (and I strongly suspect he can't, despite his best attempts), he shall lose. I myself will not be voting for either candidate, so it's no skin off my nose either way. But I can smell moose patties even when the Party of Compassion tells me it's American Apple Pie. The Palin hatred is only secondarily about policy. First, it's about the hatred of the Normal American. And Normal Americans are the people who vote.

Moore sees this. So does Obama. They know that the Enemies of the Normal in their camp tipped their hand immediately and revealed their profound contempt for the ordinary American. And Obama and Moore know how that sort of stuff plays in Paducah.

What remains to be seen is whether the Enemies of the Normal can restrain their freakish hatred of Palin's normalcy (and particularly of her disabled child – get your "Sarah Palin Retard Baby Jokes" right here, Team Obama!) in order to achieve their long-term goals. Given the performance of people like Sullivan and Steyn's correspondent so far, not to mention the MSM journalists who "wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin's youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother's hair into place," my bet is no. When the voices of moderation for Team Obama are Michael Moore and – I am not making this up – P.Z. Myers, you are in deep, deep trouble.

Sin does indeed make you stupid.

Mark P. Shea is a senior editor at www.CatholicExchange.com and a columnist for InsideCatholic. Visit his blog at www.markshea.blogspot.com.