Keeping The Lies Alive

November 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, Hackosphere, Political Philosophy, Sarah Palin 

Andrew Sullivan continues to associate himself and his Atlantic Monthly Group-owned web site with the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign: That Sarah Palin is not the mother of her son Trig:

And there will surely be, over time, substantiation of all these charges – “silk boxer shorts”! “I’m pregnant!” – or not.

It was an inexcusable and fateful lapse of ethics, so Sullivan has a personal reason for doing whatever he can to bury Palin. It’s always interesting to plumb how people use both facts and lies for purposes that have nothing to do with truth — for instance, those around McCain who’ve leaked prejudicial details about her performance.

Since no one can persuasively blame McCain’s six-point loss on his VP choice, Palin’s critics must have another motive for scapegoating her. As with all liars and leakers, you can’t know the motives until you’ve seen the faces. Call it the Deep Throat rule. Now that we know it was Mark Felt, we know that the man who helped bring down President Nixon wasn’t a person of conscience but an FBI official who’d been spurned for promotion and whose own penchant for illegality doomed the prosecution of William Ayers. As a result, Watergate looks a lot different.

So too with the anti-Palin leakers. We don’t know who they are, but we can make a good guess about their motives. Presumably many if not most of those around Sen. McCain were not the fall’s culture warriors but the winter and spring’s moderates and mavericks. When it came to the choice of Palin, these advisers would either have opposed it or held their noses.

Since Nov. 4, the GOP has been without a leader. Neither McCain nor any of those whom he defeated automatically qualifies. The leading candidate is Palin — the new Reagan, some say, a social issues conservative, anti-elitist, attractive, young.

Imagine how appalled moderate McCainites would be at the idea that their own campaign had produced this monster of politics. And so they’re doing what they can to tear her down. But what if they’re telling the truth about her? Not possible. The relevant truth is not in what she did; it’s in what they’re doing. Know only the lie or leak, then be fooled. Know the liar, then know the motive, and begin to know the truth.

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