Sarah Palin Takes on Beltway Media Elite

Jules Crittenden's got a morning roundup of news and commentary on Sarah Palin's big night at the Republican National Convention:

Crittenden links to his employer's piece, "GOP Ready to Rumble," and offers chagrin at his journalistic brethren's anti-Palin attackocracy:

It gets a little embarrassing sometimes, being an ink-stained wretch, when you see the way the other scribblers can’t stop piling on one and can’t stop worshipping the other. Here’s a great Dem talking point, compliments of the Washington Post: Palin slashed funding for teen moms. Not a peep on what the increase was, what the money was actually for, what else she might have slashed, whether the program is actually worth a damn or well managed, or anything else resembling context. Maybe it was the horrible, meanspirited act of a hypocritical pol, but with no indication anyone bothered to ask any of those questions, who knows? A little shoddy. Hang on, here we go. New media makes old media look bad again. Via Malkin: Slashed line item was a threefold increase.

Then there’s the rampant lefty sexism. Even some of my own pals can’t help themselves. The funny part is how they think a couple days of partisan squawking will be enough to force her out. Anyway, tonight we hear from the vice-presidential candidate who has the power to induce fits of apoplexy, and then, maybe, we’ll get a sense of whether actual voters share the ire.

The Wall Street Journal picks up on the theme, directing covering fire at the inside the Beltway media crowd's anti-Palin mysogyny:

Even as the Obama camp ponders how best to handle John McCain's veep pick of Sarah Palin, the high priests and priestesses of the media have marked her as an apostate. The Beltway class is in full-throated rebellion against a nondomesticated conservative who might pose a threat to their coronation of Barack Obama and the return of Camelot-on-the-Potomac....

This is the same media whose chant for weeks - no, months - has been "let McCain be McCain." If we know anything about John McCain, it is that he is by instinct a reformer, sometimes to a fault. Yet when he acts like McCain and picks a maverick reformer in his own mold, his former media cheering squad turns on him for not conforming to Beltway mores and picking someone they've all met 10 times in the CNN green room....
What's really going on here is that the Beltway class can see how popular the Palin pick is with Republicans outside Washington, and especially with middle-class conservatives. As Richard Land, a leader with the Southern Baptist Convention, said Monday, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin closed the "enthusiasm gap" between the two parties.

There is nothing more dangerous to entrenched Washington power than a populist conservative who looks unlikely to buy into Washington's creature comforts. Take a close look at Governor Palin's record on ethics and energy in Alaska, and it becomes clear what this Beltway outburst is actually about. The irony is that while Senator Obama is running on change, his acceptance speech made explicit that he's promising only more power and money for Washington. Sarah Palin's history of taking on the career politicians of a corrupt Alaskan GOP machine - her own party - shows that she's the more authentic change agent.

Meanwhile, a former Democrat explains why she's voting McCain-Palin in November (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin).

Everyday Americans know change-we-can-believe in when they see it!

Photo Credit: Jules Crittenden