It's the Right-Wingers Who Are Unloading the Harshest Critiques About Palin’s Bizarre Departure

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America. Posted July 8, 2009.

Of course, the right has been propping up this media straw man on Palin's behalf for months now. Back during the campaign, The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger penned an angry column titled, "Hatin' Palin," in which he bemoaned the "stoning" the former VP candidate has had to withstand from "the media." "The abuse being heaped on Sarah Palin is such a cheap shot," he lamented.

Of course, Henninger wouldn't say so, but it was GOP pundits who seemed to be unfurling the most "abuse" at Palin: conservative commentators such as Peggy Noonan, George Will, David Brooks, David Frum, and Kathleen Parker -- who all came clean about Palin's glaring deficiencies as a candidate. In fact, Brooks went so far as to call her a "cancer" on the GOP, while Noonan claimed Palin's candidacy symbolized a "new vulgarism in American politics." Yet Henninger played dumb and pretended "the media" were guilty of taking pot shots at Palin.

And so it is today: Right-wing media activists are trying to whip up righteous indignation at how nasty and unfair the liberal media are being toward Palin and her decision to step down as governor. Truth is, conservative commentators are the ones unfurling the harshest critiques.

In other words, when it comes to fighting the GOP's bruising Palin civil war, leave the press, and liberals, out of it.

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