Sarah Palin: Oprah, MSM, CNN, Polls, and The Obsession with Sarah

MSM’s Obsession with Sarah: Why MSM Continues to Bash Sarah Palin a Year after Election

MSM: Sarah Palin “Not Qualified to Run”

A Closer a Look at the Candidate the MSM Claimed “Was” Qualified to Run, Barack Obama, and What’s He’s Achieved While in Office

It’s been over a year since the past election and the MSM continues it’s obsession with Sarah Palin, a candidate who ran for Vice-President on the losing ticket. If you take a stroll down memory lane, one year after past elections, the guy, or Gerraldine Ferraro, the only gal who were vice president candidates, had by now, disappeared from the MSM’s radar and had become a tiny blip in history. Not so with Palin. Palin has become the liberal media’s political nightmare, the “creature” they, despite their “heroic efforts”, have failed to destroy.

Yesterday, CNN published an article on a recent political poll with this headline: CNN Poll: Most Americans say Palin not qualified to serve as president.

Based on the headline you’d think the CNN pollsters had spoken with “most Americans”. Despite the fact that over a hundred million Americans voted in the last presidential election, the number of “most Americans” polled in the CNN survey: 1,104.

Of course, CNN will argue that the poll was scientific, that the 1,104 respondents, an infinitesimal number of the numbers of American voters, are a “true” measure of “most Americans”. But what about the validity of the CNN poll? About.com has some surprising answers.

According to Deconstructing a Political Poll, How to Determine if a Political Poll is Valid or Newsworthy, there are several points to be considered when judging the validity of a media poll. Points such as the margin of error, how many were surveyed, who was surveyed, and, how the questions were worded. “Beware” of poll results where the full text of the questions were not provided.

From CNN:

“The survey indicates that a majority of Republicans, 54 percent, feel Palin is qualified, with 44 percent indicating she isn’t. But only 29 percent of independent voters questioned feel she is qualified to serve as president, with 68 percent disagreeing. According to the poll, nine in 10 Democrats feel Palin is not qualified.”

and:

“The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted November 13-15, with 1,014 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall sample.”

From Descontructing a Political Poll:

“Also ask yourself: how was the question worded? Professional pollsters know how to phrase a question so that it is neutral rather than one that leads the participant towards an answer. Beware news reports that summarize polling results but fail to provide full text of the questions.”

Missing from CNN’s article, the full text of the questions in the survey.

CNN published the results of the poll the day before Palin’s bio, “Going Rogue” hit the shelves and the same day Palin’s interview with Oprah Winfrey was aired. What a coincidence.

The next presidential election will be held in 2012. Even so, it’s fairly apparent that Sarah Palin, no matter how hard the MSM tries to portray her as inept, and “unqualified”, is considered a viable candidate, and a huge threat in the next election.

There’s also the inescapable fact that, even though Sarah Palin was the candidate for Vice President, the media vetted Palin as if she were running against Barack Obama. The MSM pronounced Barack Obama was the more “qualified” candidate, even though Obama, a Senator, had less executive experience than Palin, a former Governor of Alaska. That was before the election. Enough time has elapsed that we believe it’s fair game to look at Obama, the MSM’s pick for President, and how well he’s performed as president.

Obama’s first piece of legislation, the massive trillion dollar Stimulus package, has been so far, riddled with partisan politics, pork barrel projects, and, much to the MSM’s chagrin, an employment rate that’s jumped the shark. Surprisingly, investigative journalists have discovered that the Obama administration has been misleading the public on the number of jobs “saved or created”. Then there’s the millions in bonuses paid to executives in companies who received billions in bail-out funds from the government.

Government takeover of banks, financial institutions and the auto industry.

Despite the fact that there’s almost a million homeless, 35 million on food stamps, and between 12-20 million people here illegally, the top priority of the Obama administration, after pushing through the Stimulus bill, has been to push legislation that would completely overhaul the American healthcare system in the guise of “fixing” healthcare insurance availability for an estimated 27 million Americans. In the proposed legislation, a mandatory fine or jail time if you don’t have healthcare insurance. The government entity who will be in charge of ensuring Americans have healthcare insurance, the IRS. Millions of Americans who didn’t have to file, will have file returns with proof of healthcare insurance.

Next on the Obama administration agenda: Cap and Trade legislation, the same legislation that Obama admitted will “skyrocket” utility rates of Americans. After Cap and Trade, the Obama administration’s plan for Immigration. In the works, a proposal to allow the millions here illegally to register, pay any unpaid taxes, get a background check, then become citizens who will then be the next 12 million plus consolidated block of potential voters.

I remember well the number of newspapers, who, when proudly backing Obama for President, stated that it wasn’t Obama’s qualifications-he had none-but his “promise”, his “style” and his “intelligence” which would usher in a new “hope” and “change” in America. Also, Obama would restore America’s reputation across the globe. Very reminiscent of the same gushing, glowing tribute paid by those who awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. It wasn’t what Obama had actually done to win the prize, but what he “would do”.

So far, Obama has set a date for the United States military to leave Iraq. He’s yet to decide what to “do” in Afghanistan even though he promised months ago he had a plan and, he’s yet to act on the recommendations made by his top commander to add more troops. Meanwhile NATO has begun to grumble. The U.S. is building it’s largest embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, while covert operations continue to worry the Pakistan citizens, who believe their country is being taken over by the U.S. in secret-covert operations in the guise of routing the Taliban.

There’s been various op-ed pieces published in international papers written by people who’ve begun to wonder just when Obama will actually show some substance instead of “style”. And then there was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. The response from overseas was much the same as here, that Obama was awarded a prize that should have been awarded to someone who had actually “done” something.

And then there’s Oprah. Way back when Oprah first began to tout Obama I remember telling friends that this was a huge plus for Obama in that Oprah’s fanbase consisted of millions of “soccer” moms across America. And that it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the power of Oprah’s influence. Millions of women bought the books Oprah read, listened to the people Oprah handpicked as spiritual, financial, and wellness advisers. In short, I knew Oprah’s decision to publicly back Barack Obama would translate into millions of conservative votes. And so I found it slightly ironic when, during the interview, Oprah asked Sarah if, during the last election, Sarah felt she was “qualified” to be president. Ironic, in that Oprah, the undisputed queen of talk shows, and media mogul billionaire, had used her own form of powerful lobbying to back, in my opinion, a man with less “qualifications” as her choice for President. And that Sarah, a former governor, was once again, having to defend her qualifications to the very woman who used her influence to get Obama elected, over a year after the election ended.

Despite the fact that CNN’s ratings have tumbled to the cellar, the news org. continues to play its advisory role to the American public as to who is “best qualified” to run the country, such as Barack Obama, the guy CNN backed in the last election. Kind of like the obnoxious, know-it-all guy, whose company is going bankrupt, who gives you advise on who to hire to run your business.

By LBG