Amen!

A rather appropriate title for a Sunday morning post, don't you think?

In Saturday's New York Post, columnist Ralph Peters published a column entitled "Our Sister Sarah Palin's Anti-Elitist Charm," in which he says precisely what I've been saying about the disgusting attacks by leftists against Sarah Palin for the past three weeks.

Just as I have written many times before, Peters writes that the disdain of the left-elite towards Palin ultimately has little to do with Palin herself, but with what and with whom she represents. Peters writes:

When The New York Times, CNN, the NBC basket of basket cases and all the barking blog dogs insult Palin, they're insulting us. When they smear her, they're smearing every American who actually works for a living, who doesn't expect a handout, who doesn't have a full-time accountant to parse the family taxes, who believes in the Pledge of Allegiance and who thinks a church is more than just a tedious stop on daughter Emily's 100K wedding day.

Abso-friggin'-lutely! I could go on citing quotes from the article, but go read it yourself. You'll enjoy it.

Now as an academic myself - a history professor to be precise - I suppose I should provide my own take as to what past presidential race this one most resembles. Ever since the nominees of both parties were determined, and in the months since, this year's presidential election has actually reminded me of two past presidential contests: the elections of 1896 and 1900.

In 1896, the Democrats were led by a 36 year-old candidate of hope and change named William Jennings Bryan, a man with brilliant oratorical skills, if slim policy knowledge. The Republicans, by contrast, were led by an experienced political warhorse named William McKinley, a 51 year-old Civil War veteran who had served as a congressman from and later governor of Ohio. Despite lacking the charisma of his Democratic adversary, McKinley was elected to his first term as President of the United States that November.

In 1900, the Democrats nominated Bryan once again, hoping that the voters had tired of McKinley's pragmatic conservatism. At that year's Republican convention, the delegates re-nominated McKinley by acclamation, but they had another choice to make. In 1899, during the middle of McKinley's first term, Vice President Garret Hobart had passed away, leaving the position vacant. Reaching into the ranks of the party's young, progressive wing, the Republican delegates chose the 42 year-old reformist Theodore Roosevelt - who had been governor of New York for less than two years - to be McKinley's vice presidential running-mate. Sound familiar?

Am I suggesting that history repeats itself? No, but as Tom Kratman is fond of saying, history does like to rhyme.

Update:

In case you all are wondering, that picture of Sarah Palin in the "valley trash" t-shirt is genuine, not a photoshop. The picture was taken in July 2004, after Republican State Sen. Ben Stevens (son of Republican U.S. Senator Ted Stevens) remarked that people living in the Mat-Su Borough, an area northeast of Anchorage, including Palin's hometown of Wasilla, are "just valley trash."