'If You Can Run the PTA, You Can Run the Country' -- Republicans Explain Their Support for Palin

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted September 30, 2008.

Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy has provoked no shortage of strong opinions. But while critics on the left and in the mainstream media have found ample reasons to criticize her, Palin's Republican supporters have their own heartfelt reasons to embrace and defend her candidacy.

In a series of interviews with Palin supporters on Monday before a Bexley, Ohio rally featuring Palin and GOP presidential nominee John McCain, Palin fans detailed many reasons why they like -- if not love -- her candidacy.

They said she was feisty, plain spoken and not afraid to take on fights others shirk from. She was from the middle-class, balanced family and work, and had worked at thankless jobs -- like her local PTA -- and exemplified Christian family values. They said Palin was a fast learner, was undaunted by her critics, and gave hope to women who see her rising to the role given to her by McCain. And, most notably, they said she would be a good president.

"I've been there," said Ellie Plessinger, a real estate consultant from Saganaw, Michigan, who extolled Palin's work on local schools. "If you can run the PTA, you can run the country."

"She's real. Everyone can identify with her," said Karen Rinehart, from Pinkerton, a suburb of Columbus, who praised her clarity. "She has five kids. I have six."

"She is a go-getter. She is adorable," said Diedre Smalley, from Lancaster, also near Columbus, who was enthralled by Palin's values. "She is conservative. She is family oriented. She is pro-life. She is her own woman. She makes me feel proud."

These and other comments reveal that Palin's supporters feel as strongly about her as her liberal critics. In conversations with these and other fans at a rally at Capital University, a Lutheran school in a small township inside Ohio's capital city, it became clear that Palin's political base was formidable and undeterred by her critics and detractors, including editorialists who have said she is unprepared to become president.

"Who is?" replied Rinehart, when asked if Palin was prepared to be president. "You can't say that anybody who has been there has been prepared for it. You are not prepared for it until you do it. Nobody is prepared for vice-president or president until you do it."

"I think he (McCain) is very knowledgeable about defense and security; I don't know how knowledgeable she is about that," she said. "But she has the gumption to learn and do what is right. You don't read about Alaska in the tabloids. You read about Washington and everywhere else. She has kept it clean."

"When she did her (Republican National Convention) speech, I was floored," Smalley said. "They (McCain and Palin) are exactly what America needs right now."

While Palin critics have scorned her experiences as provincial and not world-wise, Palin's middle-class roots and family life pleased these supporters.

"I come from the middle-class," said Plessinger. "She symbolizes the middle class by her story. She wasn't raised like the Kennedys or Teresa Heinz Kerry or the Rockefellers. The richest people in our government are Democrats. It came out last week. John Kerry was the richest. You get the idea that they come into our politics like they are entitled. The drive-by media has made misperception that only the Republicans are elite, or are wealthy."

Plessinger said she was put off by media reports that describe Alaska as "backwards or unsophisticated." She said she, like Palin, has worked on her local PTA "in leadership positions" for many years "for the kids." Plessinger was impressed that Palin not only took on thankless hard PTA fights and won, but that she then sought higher office.

"You have to deal with all kinds of conflicting interests," she said, referring to working for local schools. "People diminish that and say it doesn't matter. Palin was successful. Then she runs for governor and takes on problems in our party. She saw corruption and she stood up to it. She stood up to the oil industry. I know exactly what it takes I wish we had leaders like that in Ohio."

Plessinger was wearing six Palin campaign buttons, including one showing Palin holding a shotgun saying, in pink lettering, "Read my Lipstick: Change is Coming."

"She came from a middle-class family. She did it with conviction and grit," Plessinger concluded. "God's in charge. I'm voting for God first."

Others at the rally were drawn to Palin's accomplishments as a mother and politician.

"She's awesome," said Tracey Chernek, a nursing student from Columbus. "She says what she needs to say without backing down. She is a lot like Sen. McCain. They are very opinionated and they don't back down."

Chernek said Palin's ability to balance work and family were inspiring.

"She has a family and a lot of Americans can relate to that," she said. "She is a working mother. She has kids. She works and she balances it out. A lot of women struggle with that."

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Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and author of Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008).

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