Continuing fallout from Palin selection. The question remains whether her positives to the Republican base will outweigh her negatives to everyone else.
Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal points out that Palin's unsourced quotations in praise of small town life came from right-wing journalist, Westbrook Pegler. Pegler came to fame as a columnist for Scripps-Howard in the 1930s but was hired by William Randolph Hearst's syndicate in 1944. He won a Pulitzer for exposes of corruption on the waterfront, but was most noted for his persistent hostility to government power during the New Deal and McCarthy era. Bobby Kennedy's son has been quoted in the Huffington Post, saying, "Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that 'some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.' It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list."
Of course, too much can be made from such referentials. Would that we could believe Palin even knew who Pegler was. Her speech was penned by National Review journalist and former Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully.
Think Of the Children
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