Sarah Palin May Be a Pit Bull in Lipstick, but She’s No Populist.
Posted by Jim Hightower, JimHightower.com at 6:06 PM on September 4, 2008.

Mary Ellen Lease would be ashamed.

“Perfect populist pitch.” That’s how CBS political pundit Jeff Greenfield described Sarah Palin’s VP acceptance speech.

Excuse me, but real populists don’t support profiteering schemes of Big Oil or embrace the extension and expansion of tax giveaways to Wall Street speculators and corporate chieftans.

Palin might claim to be a pit bull in lipstick, but she’s damn sure no populist. As Greenfield must surely know in his less infatuated moments, she is to populism what near beer is to beer — only not as close. Indeed, she’s the candidate of the plutocrats. Mary Ellen Lease — a real hell-raising populist from the 1880s and 90s — would be appalled at the media’s perversion of this historic and proud term.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of “Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time to Take It Back.” He publishes the monthly “Hightower Lowdown,” co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

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Mary Elizabeth Lease
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Mary Elizabeth Lease (1850-1933) was an American lecturer, writer, and political activist. Most of her political work was done toward the cause of temperance. She was born to Irish immigrants Joseph P. and Mary Elizabeth (Murray) Clyens, in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. In 1895, she wrote The Problem of Civilization Solved, and in 1896, she moved to New York City where she edited the democratic newspaper, World. In addition, she worked as an editor for the National Encyclopedia of American Biography. Mary Elizabeth Lease was also known as Mary Ellen Lease. She was called “Queen Mary” (after the Queen Mary) by her supporters and “Mary Yellin” by her enemies. Lease died in Callicoon, New York.

At the age of twenty she moved to Kansas to teach school in Osage Mission (St. Paul, Kansas), and three years later she married Charles L. Lease, a local pharmacist. After unsuccessful farming ventures in Kingman County and in Texas, the Leases and their four children moved to Wichita, where she took a leading role in civic and social activities.

Lease was also involved in the Populist Party, gathering support for their cause. Though Lease is widely believed to have advised Kansas farmers to “raise less corn and more hell,” she later said that the admonition had been invented by reporters. Lease decided to let the quote stand because she thought “it was a right good bit of advice.” She believed that large business would make the people of America slaves, saying, “Wall street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.”

By 1890, her involvement in the growing revolt of Kansas farmers against high mortgage interest and railroad rates had placed her in the forefront of the People’s (Populist) Party, and she stomped all over Kansas as well as the Far West and the South for the cause. She was a powerful and emotional speaker; Emporia editor William G. Allen White, who did not share her political views, wrote on one occasion that “she could recite the multiplication table and set a crowd hooting and harrahing at her will.” She made more than 160 speeches.
More an agitator than a practical politician, by 1896 Lease had become alienated from the Populist Party, and thereafter she turned to personal interests. She divorced her husband in 1902 and spent the rest of her life with one or another of her children in the East until her death in 1933.

Some claim Mary Elizabeth Lease to have been the model for Dorothy in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

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The “P” in “POW” Does Not Stand for “President.”
Posted by ZP Heller, The Real News Network at 11:12 AM on September 5, 2008.

McCain is hellbent on playing the POW card to the bitter end.

If the Republican National Convention revealed anything it’s that John McCain is hellbent on overplaying his POW card to the bitter end.  In the last few months alone we’ve seen the McCain campaign overuse McCain’s POW story to justify everything from his healthcare policy to forgetting how many houses he owns, from cheating at the Saddleback forum to his love of ABBA.  Each time McCain and the GOP invoke his past in vain they diminish the story’s potency and cheapen its respectability.  Such a political ploy compelled fellow former POWs like Dr. Phillip Butler to come forward and declare that this experience does not qualify McCain to lead, which Brave New PAC featured in its recent video that received over 190,000 views in the last few days.

Even the corporate media have grown weary of McCain trotting out his POW story. Andrew Sullivan channeled Joe Biden to dub McCain, “A noun, a verb, and POW.”  And Newsweek’s Howard Fineman said, “I think they are going to it way too many times.”  These pronouncements ought to have served as a cautionary sign for the McCain campaign, considering how deeply enamored the media has been with McCain throughout this election.  But judging from the RNC this week, McCain and the GOP just can’t help themselves.

While the Democrats made economic populism the central theme of their convention, the Republicans used their convention primarily to pay tribute to McCain’s military record.  On Tuesday night, the single charged moment in President Bush’s otherwise uninspired, unconvincing televised speech came when he referred to McCain’s POW past.  “Fellow citizens,” Bush said. “If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will.”

When the crowd applauded, two things became clear: 1) Republicans are willing to stoop so low as to depict the left as merciless Vietcong captors (ironic, considering it was Republicans like Bush and McCain who approved of torturing suspected terrorists); and 2) The Republicans can’t make this race about issues because they would lose.

A raging class war?  Rising unemployment?  Soaring gas prices?  Unaffordable healthcare?  A recession brought on by an unpopular war?  These are all crises courtesy of Bush and backed by McCain, who has virtually voted lockstep with the president.  Why bring up these subjects when you could be playing on your audience’s sympathies by touting your nominee’s time in a Vietnamese prison over thirty years ago?

For all the talk of candidates needing “experience” in this election, the only real experience the GOP is concerned with is McCain’s POW past.   That’s why Sarah Palin made the ludicrous claim that “there’s only one man who’s ever really fought for you,” and that it’s a long way from “a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.”  That’s why John McCain devoted most of his speech last night to recounting his tale of woe, which we already heard during the video tribute that played only ten minutes earlier.  And that’s why McCain drew the rather obvious comparison that Obama doesn’t have “the scars” that he has.

The reality is that as terrible as McCain’s experience may have been, that alone does not qualify him to be president.  As Dr. Butler says, “The prisoner of war experience is not a good prerequisite for a president of the United States.”  And by telling and retelling his POW story, by exploiting it for political gain, McCain dishonors those who have served our country and renders his own experience meaningless.

Tagged as: george bush, john mccain, gop, economy, vietnam, minnesota, republicans, sarah palin, pow, st. paul, hanoi hilton
ZP Heller is the editorial director of Brave New Films. He has written for The American Prospect, AlterNet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Huffington Post, covering everything from politics to pop culture.