In my LRC article today, I noted that Sarah Palin was not a Beltway type of politician, which meant she had to be destroyed.  While Republican conservatives want to believe it was just the “liberal media” that did her in, the real damage was done to her by the Republican operatives of the Beltway.  Now, while I think Palin has something to offer in the political realm, I cannot say that her performances in the TV interviews (what little I saw, given I don’t have television reception) were exactly stellar.

One of the worst Beltway operatives is Peggy Noonan, who has a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal and likes to think of herself as a “thoughtful person.”  She was one of the early opponents of Palin and today she claims that Palin actually was “harmful” to the country.  The ending of her hit piece, however, is a real howler:

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It’s not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won’t be that way.

We are going to need the best.

This is hilarious.  You see, Noonan considers the “best” political “leaders” to be those people in the Beltway who have created this economic depression in the first place.  I’m sure that she considers Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to be “sturdy” people, despite the fact that they have created a financial and eoconomic calamity through their insane policies of inflation.  No doubt she thinks that Barack Obama is “sturdy,” and that the ever-despicable John McCain is “sturdy,” and so on.

Think of what the Beltway people have done to our economy and our very country.  They have destroyed our economy, and then have claimed that “free markets” were to blame.  They have criminalized just about every economic transaction, and then claim they are “protecting” us from “fraud.”  They have invaded two countries and have utterly turned Pakistan into a war zone, and they have turned local police into something akin to an occupying army.

Understand that these people are the very people that Noonan praises and claims must “lead” us out of this quagmire.  In truth, the very people we can do without are those inside the Beltway.  They are chislers who live off the labor of others, and then claim that those who support them somehow are the real parasites.  They are like the elites of the Roman Empire who destroyed everything in their paths while claiming to be the standard of good citizenship.

No, Sarah Palin was and is not some sort of Messiah who can lead this country, as though anyone in government “leads” our society.  However, when Noonan claims that these perilous times need Wisdom from the Beltway, she is full of it.  Here is another howler:

Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

What Noonan does not say — but what needs to be said — is that these very calamities (except for secessionist movements, which I heartily support) — have been brought on by the very Beltway elites she thinks are the “serious” people who need to “lead us.”  Take the following:

“Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues.” Mrs. Palin’s supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan.

And just what have the Beltway “experts” done to Pakistan?  Well, they are in charge of the American planes bombing villages in that country, further leading to death and political unrest.  Just what kind of “thinking” about Pakistan does Noonan promote?  What she and her friends have been thinking?

Again, I am not endorsing Sarah Palin for anything, much less President of the United States.  However, I would say that she is a much more serious person than Peggy Noonan ever could hope to be.  Noonan is a shallow, narcissistic, and ignorant person who is well paid to write rambling and nonsensical prose, all to promote the Leviathan that has become the government of the United States of America.