Last night I was a panellist on a Question Time hosted by Battersea Conservatives along with Dick Tracy (GLA Member and former MP, Henley MP John Howell, Matthew Parris of The Times and chaired by Jonathan Isaby of The Daily Telegraph. It was an enjoyable event and nice to see a wide range of views on show - except I was astonished to see that a majority of the audience preferred the notion of Barack Hussein Obama as President to John McCain. The stated reason? They objected to Sarah Palin's fundamentalist views. Excuse me?
Where have got this from? It won't be from anything Governor Palin has actually said - or worse, done. Her selection undoubtedly energised the GOP's conservative base without her needing to pander to it. Whereas in 2004, President Bush ran a divisive campaign on wedge issues such as abortion and gay marriage, the GOP has not done so in 2008.
So I ask again, where did my fellow Tories get this notion that Governor Palin has fundamentalist views that disqualify her from the White House from? Even John Howell MP cited them as his rationale for opposing a McCain victory. I asked Mr Howell and the audience to cite when Sarah Palin had expressed these fundamentalist views in this campaign or when she had allowed her personal views to affect her judgment as Governor of Alaska. No one could point to an example. It was apparent that, to a man, they had all formed this prejudiced view of Governor Palin thanks to successful smears of her reputation by, primarily, the damned BBC.
I recited a series of smears about Obama. That he once took drugs. That he was educated at a madrassah. That he has consorted with a self-confessed domestic terrorist. That he worshipped for 20 years in a church led by a man who called on God to damn the USA (and referred to his own nation as the US of KKK). That he donated $800,000 to a supposed charity that is now under FBI investigation for electoral fraud. That he was the attorney and then Chief Executive of that same supposed charity.
Except none of those are smears. They are all factually accurate - unlike the BBC smear that Governor Palin is some kind of religious zealot who wants to turn the US into some kind of religious state (as if she is the Totty Taliban) if she becomes Vice-President or President.
Last night showed how, yet again, the BBC's institutional (and no longer remotely unsubtle) leftist bias has a pervasive and dangerous effect on political discourse in Britain. While some in the audience may have been sincere in their desire for the high-taxing Obama to win (which begs the question why they're Tories in the first place), others perhaps wanted an Obama victory out of a misguided and politically correct desire to be seen as being "right on" by endorsing a black President (despite his lack of Executive experience, shady criminal past, dangerous Iraq policy, naive foreign policies, big government spending programmes and liberal voting record). All conceded readily that McCain is very well qualified to be President. If only they'd taken the time to make their own enquiries as to Sarah Palin's strong qualification to be Vice-President.
Last night I was a panellist on a Question Time hosted by Battersea Conservatives along with Dick Tracy (GLA Member and former MP, Henley MP John Howell, Matthew Parris of The Times and chaired by Jonathan Isaby of The Daily Telegraph. It was an enjoyable event and nice to see a wide range of views on show - except I was astonished to see that a majority of the audience preferred the notion of Barack Hussein Obama as President to John McCain. The stated reason? They objected to Sarah Palin's fundamentalist views. Excuse me?