Trig Palin 1, Andrew Sullivan 0

Andrew Sullivan’s modified limited hang-out on the Palin pass-the-baby story. Having let his adjutant rebut him last week on his own site, “The Daily Dish,” he has announced a suspension of the distasteful campaign he has been waging to get Gov. Palin to prove she is Trig’s mother.

It’s a relief he won’t be harrassing Trig anymore. It’s a shame he wasn’t accountable for having republished a lie on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site without checking the facts. No other “Atlantic” journalist would have, and he shouldn’t have, either. Ever since, Sullivan says he’s just been trying to get the truth. It’s actually looked as though he’s been trying to get Palin or Sen. McCain to provide records or some other official response so that he would be able to say he had posed a legitimate question. In this effort, he has failed.

Whenever he insists, as he does yet again in his last (we hope) post, that by republishing a lie and then defending his behavior for months, he was just asking questions or expressing opinions, he underscores how desperately we need newspapers, or at least professionally-trained newspaper reporters. The Hackosphere — though not Sullivan; this was a bizarre aberration — is still too prone to sophomoric and poorly-formed content, and blatant lies carefully disguised as fact (what first fooled Sullivan). Bloggers also go to bed too early. Last week no “Atlantic” blogger had anything on the failure of the auto bailout until the next morning.

The Trig story was the most effective libel of the ‘08 campaign, and Sullivan will always be complicit in it. He gets some credit for letting a contrarian colleague say his piece and using it as a means of making a passably graceful exit from a disgraceful episode in the history of the so-called new media.

Palin Had Wanted To Serve The "Dish"

Sarah Palin considered suing the Atlantic Monthly's "Daily Dish" blog because its writer, Andrew Sullivan, republished a false story about her fifth pregnancy before checking the facts. The original story, concocted by a left-wing blog based on an episode of "Desperate Housewives," accused Palin and her minor daughter of a massive coverup of Trig Palin's true parentage. Ultimately the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign, it would barely have been noticed if Sullivan hadn't given it credence by lending it his considerable reputation.

Sullivan is right that a lawsuit probably would've failed, although not for the bogus reason he offers in his post, which is basically that he should be allowed to publish lies in order to get the facts. He's still making the claim that he repeated the story only "to get at the truth of the matter." Of course a journalist does that work before running his story, not after. Still, to win against the Atlantic Monthly and Sullivan, Palin would have had to prove that his running an unverified and ultimately unverifiable story was the result of malice, which is almost impossible for a plaintiff to do.

So her decision not to sue doesn't remove Sullivan's shame. In the months since his original publication, Sullivan has assiduously kept the story alive, evidently hoping for some form of expiation, all the while arguing that bloggers operate according to different rules than reporters (except when they don't, such as when Sullivan defended a fellow blogger and called him a journalist). Whether his theory would have helped his publisher defeat a libel lawsuit will have to be tested another time an influential blogger republishes a flagrant lie without doing his job and damages the reputation of innocent people as a result.

Last One Singing, Wins

Andrew Sullivan runs the most important political blog in the world. For the second time in a little over a year, he's suspended publication because he's completely distracted by Sarah Palin. This time, he's published a grandiloquent "To Our Readers" flourish saying that he needs to close up shop so he and his colleagues can read and analyze her cheesy memoir.

Over Labor Day weekend in 2008, he republished a shameful lie about Palin and her minor daughter without checking the facts. He's never apologized. Instead, he stubbornly defended his action, and even now he's doing what he can to keep the lie alive. It has become obvious that Sullivan is still desperately hoping to uncover evidence that Palin is not the biological mother of her youngest child. He writes today:

There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.

Sullivan is coming pretty close to staking his reputation on this. If he were right, it would destroy Palin, not to mention also destroy or harm scores of other people who would've needed to be involved (including, of course, the other Palin children). If he's wrong, which seems glaringly obvious, his reputation won't soon recover. Also, he may yet expose his publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Group, to a libel suit should Palin decide she can show that he has acted with malice (a charge he would seem to invite when he attacks her using sexually-charged language) and with reckless disregard for the truth.

So turn off your cell phones and pagers, and don't rustle your librettos. Sullivan vs. Palin has become an operatic death match.

We're Free Not To Judge Too Quickly

The murders and attempted murders in Arizona, which have left a dedicated, principled, and gracious member of the House, Gabrielle Giffords, in critical condition, have also unleashed an onslaught of premature certitude about what is wrong with our political culture. As is often the case when a story is breaking, Andrew Sullivan's "The Daily Dish" is usefully aggregating news as well as the reactions of Sullivan and his correspondents. So far, no matter what anyone says, it's a fluid and completely inconclusive picture.

The suspect, 22-year-old Jerod Lee Loughner, has videos on YouTube that strongly suggest he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, according to one of Sullivan's commentators, who adds that politics would therefore be irrelevant. Sullivan's own tangential reference to the tea parties prompted another correspondent to say he or she wished Sullivan would be murdered. According to tweets by a friend of Loughner, as recently as 2007 he was a left-winger who was obsessed with prophecies about the end of the world in 2012. Loughner himself writes:

I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.

If I may briefly atone, one of the first things I did when I heard the story was download a copy of Sarah Palin's infamous map labeling the districts of vulnerable members of Congress, including Rep. Giffords', with rifle cross hairs. The irony was overwhelming, and besides, I'm not a Palin fan.

Then I caught myself. What did I really know about the suspect? Was I really on the verge of trying to score a political point while Rep. Giffords was still in surgery? As the moments and hours passed and the picture became muddier, I resolved to withhold judgment until we had more facts. Meanwhile, tweets and on-line comments blamed Palin and Fox News in ways that struck me as being crudely opportunistic. I'm sorry to say that at LA's usually diligent CBS radio outlet, KNX, senior political correspondent Dick Helton persistently made the same facile and undocumented connections. There but for the grace of God.

Yes, it's ironic that Palin's PAC targeted (as they say in politics all the time) Giffords, even more ironic that U.S. District Court judge John Roll (shown at right), who was murdered today, received death threats after a ruling in a case involving a claim against an Arizona rancher by illegal immigrants.

But irony and truth don't always coincide. Some suggest, including Sullivan, that extreme political rhetoric can trigger psychotic violence by a troubled person such as the suspect. Perhaps so. Still, before we turn this tragedy into an object lesson about the incivility of our politics culture and especially before we name names, don't we need to see some evidence that Loughner was actually paying attention to whatever rhetoric we most passionately want to anathematize? It's not that he hasn't left plenty of documentation for experts to study. For instance, we know (again, from Sullivan's live-blogging) that Loughner was a Jimi Hendrix fan. What do we do if we find out that the last thing he listened to before heading out to Rep. Giffords' meeting was "Hey Joe" from "Are You Experienced?"

She's Got Them Right Where She Wants Them

After the November election, I was guardedly optimistic about Gov. Palin's Presidential prospects, depending on which Republican exemplar she followed. Call me crazy, but I thought the Nixon beat the Reagan paradigm by an Alaska mile. As she enters what Nixon (without any irony whatsoever) would have called her time in the wilderness, it's worth noting that Reagan had been out of office for six years when he became President and Nixon, eight. Anyway, here's my Nov. 14 post:

A friend asked what I meant suggesting that Gov. Palin could be the new Nixon instead of the new Reagan. Here are the two scenarios:

New Reagan: Several weeks before the election, GOP insider Ed Rollins said, somewhat chillingly, that some didn't think Sen. McCain was the right candidate to rebuild the party, an echo of those who felt the same about President Ford in 1976. During 1977-80, Jimmy Carter made such a muck of the economy and foreign policy that a Republican victory was almost inevitable. Having challenged and weakened Ford in the '76 primaries, Ronald Reagan earned the '80 nomination, which was tantamount to winning the election.

Palin and her advisers can't help but have grasped the possibility that Obama will falter or that the sheer magnitude of our economic and international challenges will overwhelm him. Every leading Republican has as well. The internecine sniping at Palin has nothing to do with '08 postmortems and everything to do with '12 prepositioning.

The fallacy is that the party needs a new Reagan -- a candidate with special appeal to social conservatives -- to beat the new Carter. The moderate, pro-choice John Connally or George H. W. Bush would almost certainly have beaten Carter had one of them been nominated. For '12, the GOP doesn't need a far-right champion. It needs an agonized reappraisal of what makes it necessary and viable. Delaying that work in order to coalesce around the present Palin would be a disastrous mistake, as would her hurling herself against an Obama juggernaut in '12 unless she had a reasonable chance of success. From the moment Lehman Bros. failed in mid-September, she and McCain became sacrificial lambs. One self-sacrifice per career is sufficient.

New Nixon: RN would begin with the assumption that Obama will probably not fail. An incumbent is likely to be reelected, and Obama will probably not make Carter's mistakes. Because circumstances may nonetheless hobble him, however, Mr. Nixon would advise Palin to keep her '12 options open, but he'd urge her to fix her attention on '16.

As for the present Palin, he would have enormous respect for the potential she embodies. She has an astonishing reservoir of political capital. But he would have some significant concerns. And so he would almost certainly write her a "Dear Governor Palin" letter beginning, "I am sure you are receiving a great deal of free advice from well-meaning fans and self-appointed advisers around the country. While you are of course under no obligation to give it any consideration whatsoever, I have taken the liberty of enclosing a memorandum containing just a few..." In such circumstances, his insights were usually based in the reliability of his own experience. He would make points such as this:

Take some time off the national stage. The temptation will be to accept too many of the invitations that are flowing in and to go out and challenge her critics. We've probably seen too much of her already just this week. Better to be a little scarce and mysterious. As RN liked to say, it never hurts to leave them wanting more.

Get back to work. Her critics say she's a lightweight fashion plate. Confound them by being an effective governor (or senator).

See the world and meet leaders. RN would consider this crucial -- first, because she's justifiably seen as weak in foreign policy, and second, because it would help her prepare to be in power.

Do favors. Some of RN's most important political work was done in 1964, when he campaigned loyally for the hopeless Goldwater candidacy, and in the midterm elections of 1966, doing favors that were repaid in 1968. In 2012, assuming she doesn't run, Palin should be the most loyal and committed advocate of whomever does. Purely in terms of her own political interests, the worst than could happen is that he would win and she'd have her pick of jobs.

Don't let your enemies define you. Palin provoked panic among abortion rights advocates. The weekend after she was named to the ticket, Andrew Sullivan republished a lie about her son Trig's parentage on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site that obviously still rankles. Yet Palin would close herself off from growth as a leader by taking it personally. If some people despise her because of her pro-life views, what might she learn from their passion? Some women experience the possibility of restrictions on abortion as an existential challenge. She is comfortable seeing the issue almost solely in terms of the rights of the unborn. What about the rights of the half of the population that wasn't permitted to vote until 1920? Hillary Clinton did herself a tremendous favor three years ago with a speech in which she spoke respectfully of those who hate abortion. Palin should consider making an analogous gesture, both on the abortion and the gay rights fronts.

Read and think. At least from afar, Palin doesn't seem curious or self-critical. Confidence is good in a leader; smugness is not. Mr. Nixon read hungrily all his life and spent long hours in Socratic dialogs with experts, advisers, and aides. While his core principles didn't waiver, his approach to great issues changed with the times. The anti-communist of the 1940s became the internationalist of the 1950s, the course-changing peacemaker of the 1960s and '70s, and the elder statesman of the '80s, respected by all his Democratic and Republican successors in spite of the circumstances of his administration's end.

As Palin matures as a potential national leader, her views will, one hopes, become more moderate and nuanced. Her New Reagan advisers will caution her against permitting this to happen. Lost in the fantasy that Reagan's conservative bona fides (rather than the "R" after his name) won him the '80 election, they'll urge her not to tamper with the time-tested Palin brand. But if she thinks she's fully formed and ready to be President, she'll never make it. She'll fade away prematurely or, at best, squander her potential on a quixotic '12 bid that would probably relegate her to oblivion and her party to another generation in the wilderness. If she uses the next eight years wisely, focused more on substance than on politics, she could truly be the new Nixon, and a winner.

How Palin Becomes The New Nixon

I was sort of hoping someone would notice this, from Nov. 14 on The New Nixon. Even less chance that someone will notice it over here, huh? (Hi again, Valerie!)

A friend asked what I meant suggesting that Gov. Palin could be the new Nixon instead of the new Reagan. Here are the two scenarios:

New Reagan: Several weeks before the election, GOP insider Ed Rollins said, somewhat chillingly, that some didn't think Sen. McCain was the right candidate to rebuild the party, an echo of those who felt the same about President Ford in 1976. During 1977-80, Jimmy Carter made such a muck of the economy and foreign policy that a Republican victory was almost inevitable. Having challenged and weakened Ford in the '76 primaries, Ronald Reagan earned the '80 nomination, which was tantamount to winning the election.

Palin and her advisers can't help but have grasped the possibility that Obama will falter or that the sheer magnitude of our economic and international challenges will overwhelm him. Every leading Republican has as well. The internecine sniping at Palin has nothing to do with '08 postmortems and everything to do with '12 prepositioning.

The fallacy is that the party needs a new Reagan -- a candidate with special appeal to social conservatives -- to beat the new Carter. The moderate, pro-choice John Connally or George H. W. Bush would almost certainly have beaten Carter had one of them been nominated. For '12, the GOP doesn't need a far-right champion. It needs an agonized reappraisal of what makes it necessary and viable. Delaying that work in order to coalesce around the present Palin would be a disastrous mistake, as would her hurling herself against an Obama juggernaut in '12 unless she had a reasonable chance of success. From the moment Lehman Bros. failed in mid-September, she and McCain became sacrificial lambs. One self-sacrifice per career is sufficient.

New Nixon: RN would begin with the assumption that Obama will probably not fail. An incumbent is likely to be reelected, and Obama will probably not make Carter's mistakes. Because circumstances may nonetheless hobble him, however, Mr. Nixon would advise Palin to keep her '12 options open, but he'd urge her to fix her attention on '16.

As for the present Palin, he would have enormous respect for the potential she embodies. She has an astonishing reservoir of political capital. But he would have some significant concerns. And so he would almost certainly write her a "Dear Governor Palin" letter beginning, "I am sure you are receiving a great deal of free advice from well-meaning fans and self-appointed advisers around the country. While you are of course under no obligation to give it any consideration whatsoever, I have taken the liberty of enclosing a memorandum containing just a few..." In such circumstances, his insights were usually based in the reliability of his own experience. He would make points such as this:

Take some time off the national stage. The temptation will be to accept too many of the invitations that are flowing in and to go out and challenge her critics. We've probably seen too much of her already just this week. Better to be a little scarce and mysterious. As RN liked to say, it never hurts to leave them wanting more.

Get back to work. Her critics say she's a lightweight fashion plate. Confound them by being an effective governor (or senator).

See the world and meet leaders. RN would consider this crucial -- first, because she's justifiably seen as weak in foreign policy, and second, because it would help her prepare to be in power.

Do favors. Some of RN's most important political work was done in 1964, when he campaigned loyally for the hopeless Goldwater candidacy, and in the midterm elections of 1966, doing favors that were repaid in 1968. In 2012, assuming she doesn't run, Palin should be the most loyal and committed advocate of whomever does. Purely in terms of her own political interests, the worst than could happen is that he would win and she'd have her pick of jobs.

Don't let your enemies define you. Palin provoked panic among abortion rights advocates. The weekend after she was named to the ticket, Andrew Sullivan republished a lie about her son Trig's parentage on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site that obviously still rankles. Yet Palin would close herself off from growth as a leader by taking it personally. If some people despise her because of her pro-life views, what might she learn from their passion? Some women experience the possibility of restrictions on abortion as an existential challenge. She is comfortable seeing the issue almost solely in terms of the rights of the unborn. What about the rights of the half of the population that wasn't permitted to vote until 1920? Hillary Clinton did herself a tremendous favor three years ago with a speech in which she spoke respectfully of those who hate abortion. Palin should consider making an analogous gesture, both on the abortion and the gay rights fronts.

Read and think. At least from afar, Palin doesn't seem curious or self-critical. Confidence is good in a leader; smugness is not. Mr. Nixon read hungrily all his life and spent long hours in Socratic dialogs with experts, advisers, and aides. While his core principles didn't waiver, his approach to great issues changed with the times. The anti-communist of the 1940s became the internationalist of the 1950s, the course-changing peacemaker of the 1960s and '70s, and the elder statesman of the '80s, respected by all his Democratic and Republican successors in spite of the circumstances of his administration's end.

As Palin matures as a potential national leader, her views will, one hopes, become more moderate and nuanced. Her New Reagan advisers will caution her against permitting this to happen. Lost in the fantasy that Reagan's conservative bona fides (rather than the "R" after his name) won him the '80 election, they'll urge her not to tamper with the time-tested Palin brand. But if she thinks she's fully formed and ready to be President, she'll never make it. She'll fade away prematurely or, at best, squander her potential on a quixotic '12 bid that would probably relegate her to oblivion and her party to another generation in the wilderness. If she uses the next eight years wisely, focused more on substance than on politics, she could truly be the new Nixon, and a winner.

Substance Still Sells, Sarah

Writing about Sarah Palin's bizarre Thanksgiving Day defense of her North Korea gaffe, Andrew Sullivan makes the same point people used to make about Richard Nixon after his rocking, socking congressional and senatorial campaigns and especially the Alger Hiss case:

There is a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship that, if allowed to gain more power, would split this country more deeply and more rancorously than at any time in recent years. And that's saying something.

Ironic, yes. Determinative, no. Though he was a divisive, highly partisan figure whom a significant number of Americans always loathed, Nixon was elected president twice. I bet Palin won't even get nominated. Sullivan's right that her Facebook note helps us understand why. But there's an element he doesn't mention. Yes, her rant, a pastiche of Barack Obama's gaffes, is disrespectful. But that won't lose her any points with most Republicans, I'm sorry to say.

Beyond that, I thought Palin's "Thanksgiving Message To All 57 States" was disrespectful of a solemn, 389-year-old American tradition. That doesn't make her unpatriotic. It just proves that she's irredeemably trivial.

For two weeks I've been marinating in the Thanksgiving statements and proclamations by presidents and many others that my St. John's friend Buddy Lang assembled for his premiere performance of "In God We Trust" at our church. The holiday offers a platform for a thoughtful public figure's reflections on the challenges, opportunities, and bedrock principles of the greatest nation in the world. On this day of family and national communion, Palin's message to her fellow Americans had all the poise and maturity of a high school senior who gets a chance to scrawl something in a rival's yearbook while the principal gives a speech about good manners.

Worse than that, it was all about her. With Palin, it's always all about her. Here she again departs from the new Nixon playbook. From his earliest years in public life, Nixon was fashioning a template for the west's conduct of the Cold War. It began with anti-communism, and about this the ambitious Nixon was utterly ruthless. But Nixon's vision also had a carefully considered and completely internalized second element that had to do with what was best about America being the best way to combat her enemies.

With Palin, all I can discern is her resentment, sense of entitlement, and, yes, Nixonian understanding for how these resonate with certain Americans who have concluded that they're disenfranchised or that Obama represents a unique threat. But what comes next? Specifically, when she's on a stage with other GOP candidates, how will she stack up? What will she have to say about tax policy to Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, about how to run a state government in a partisan atmosphere (and doing so without quitting) to Chris Christie?

Her victim game won't play, because they've all had to contend with the gosh-darn MSM, too. Unless she brings something else to the table, her support will melt away fast. Before the midterm election, the tea party creed was that criticism of lightweights and wack jobs like Christine O'Donnell and Carl Paladino would only make them stronger. We now know that, far right or far left, substance still sells. In the 2012 round, look for the rise of the Whiggish wonk, the Republican Obama. If Palin believed there was any advantage to doing some policy homework, we'd have seen evidence by now. As a candidate for national office, her high water mark was 2008.

The Palin Birther

Andrew Sullivan wants Oprah to ask Sarah Palin why she refuses to account for her whereabouts on November 22, 1963. Plus whether she and her minor daughter and untold others engaged in a massive coverup of her son Trig's true parentage -- the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign.

Sullivan links to a site that calls him a Palin birther, which you would think he would find embarrassing, but he doesn't. Sure, Palin's behavior in the New York 23rd congressional district race demonstrates that she's becoming toxic when it comes to rebuilding a GOP that can compete at the national level. All hope is gone that she would parlay her political capital into the makings of a mature, party-strengthening 2012 or 2016 candidacy. But rather than implying that other media figures are wrong for failing to indulge the fantasy about Trig, Sullivan should just admit that he erred in giving the false, "Desperate Housewives"-inspired pass-the-baby story a vital boost by repeating it before checking the facts. Nothing Palin could ever do will erase his shame.

Forget Trig; Pass The Locusts And Honey

A promising if inconclusive post by Andrew Sullivan about Sarah Palin's memoir. While he has done yeoman service holding her accountable on other matters, what has burned at the heart of his anti-Palin prophecy (for surely he has adopted a John the Baptist-like posture towards her; make as torturous as possible her path to political success) is his own unacknowledged original sin of republishing a fabricated story about Trig Palin's birth without checking the facts.

I have it on good authority that until very recently Sullivan had really hoped to find definitive evidence of the impossible-to-believe "Desperate Housewives" pass-the-baby fiction. It would've vindicated him, destroyed Palin politically, and perhaps even put a stake through the angry and possibly dangerous movement of which she is the de facto leader. Richard Nixon's scandal, after all, helped discredit pragmatic Republicanism for a third of a century and counting.

In today's post, though, he appears to be saying that he's found no smoking gun or 8.5-pound gap. First:

I tried to write a fair account of Palin's various stories of her incredible fifth pregnancy, labor and delivery and to reconcile all the various facts we know and the various versions of the story she has told. Just for the record and because we have aired the public record on this before. I honestly however cannot make total sense of them in a way that I'm completely convinced by and so simply do not feel comfortable making any judgment on them in any way at this point. That's fair to her, my readers, my colleagues, and the innocent private people caught up in this circus.

That's progress. There were times he put "pregnancy" in quotes when talking about Trig. And then:

[F]or those things we cannot prove objectively, we just have to leave alone at this point. I believe nothing she says is true unless I can verify it. But if I can't disprove her accounts of things only she and her family can know about, I should shut up.

He should also apologize to the Palins. It was wrong of him to lend his considerable prestige to a damaging lie and then try to keep it alive for over year.

He won't, I'm sure. At this point, really shutting up would be a considerable blessing. Sullivan has promised to leave the Trig story alone before. But if he does no more than once and for all back off the ridiculous claim that a woman is not the mother of her beloved child -- if he not only stops hinting at it but stops needing it to be true for his own sake -- he can at least do his down-by-the-Jordan bit with authenticity, saving the republic from Palinism with unmixed motives.

Covered "Dish": Andrew and Trig

Last Friday, before taking a post-election break from his blog “The Daily Dish,” Andrew Sullivan unloaded with another ridiculous attack against Gov. Palin, keeping alive the lie that she and her minor daughter Bristol conspired in a massive coverup of her son Trig’s parentage. Today Patrick Appel, subbing for the boss, wrote at the “Dish”:

I strongly believe that there is nothing to this story….

The easiest way to disprove these conspiracy theories is to consider what would be required for them to be true. Palin’s doctor, along with a good number of Mat-Su Regional’s doctors, nurses, and administrators would need to be in on the cover-up. On multiple occasions Palin would have had to pad her belly to make herself look pregnant. She would have needed to get friends to lie about seeing her breast feed. She would have had to silence an entire community – including two 17-year-olds and their friends – while the national media and the National Enquirer snooped around. Implausible to say the least.

I don’t believe Sarah Palin is capable of pulling off such a cover-up. And, like Alex Massie and John Schwenkler, I don’t understand what is being accomplished by continued investigation.

Hallelujah and amen. Good for Sullivan for letting Appel rebut him on his own site. Better if he had just dropped it weeks ago. Best if we never hear about it again — but Andrew will be back by the weekend!

Sullivan Still Trying To Evade The Trigonometry

Responding to Matt Labash at "The Weekly Standard," Andrew Sullivan denies that "I have 'advance[d] conspiracy theories that [Sarah Palin] is not the biological mother of Trig.' I would ask Labash to explain what conspiracy theory I have advanced."

That's easy: Right here. Does he really think no one remembers? In August 2008 a blog that evidently got the idea from an episode of "Desperate Housewives" claimed that Palin wasn't really the mother of her son Trig. Without checking the facts, Sullivan used his Atlantic Monthly Group-published blog to advance, or, rather, catapult the story into national prominence.

The originating site retracted the story almost immediately, but it was too late. By conferring respectability on the lie, Sullivan single-handedly made it the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign. His continuing demand that Palin provide proof that she is the mother of her child is the moral equivalent of the absurd, harassing demands of the Obama birthers. His flagrant journalistic lapse will mar his reputation forever.

Yglesias To Sullivan (Implicitly): Drop Trig

In August 2008 Andrew Sullivan published a fabricated story about Trig Palin's parentage before checking the facts, doing more than anyone else to make it the most effective libel of the campaign. Now the U.S.'s most respected progressive blogger, Matthew Yglesias, has checked the evidence and written:

Sarah Palin is Trig Palin’s mother and nobody has any business claiming otherwise.

Sullivan personally mainstreamed Trig birtherism, an annoying distraction to the country and injustice to the Palin family. Time for him to examine the evidence himself, end his crusade, and apologize. If he doesn't, then on this issue, he'll be the moral equivalent of Donald Trump, who ignored this evidence while leveraging himself into the 2012 campaign.

Being Puritanical About Palin

Promoting the insights of Garry Trudeau, Andrew Sullivan continues to encourage the idea that Gov. Palin can't learn and grow as a national figure in order to make the most of her substantial political capital. How unfortunate when a world view excludes the possibility of redemption!

Besides, the title of Sullivan's post, "Why Palin Failed," begs the question: How? She didn't cost the Republicans the election; the economy did. She had about the same negligible effect as most VP candidates. She certainly failed to be the person Sullivan and others might have wanted her to be. But she's still going to be a factor in '12 and perhaps '16. I'm content to watch and see what she does, to see whether she takes the Reagan or the Nixon way. Whatever happens, it won't be dull.

Single-Source Grist And Mill

Andrew Sullivan, Sarah Palin's most relentless critic, was inveighed upon by friends to watch the superb HBO movie "Game Change," which amply demonstrates, if anyone had any doubt, that she was an abysmal choice as John McCain's running mate. He was especially pleased to find grist for the Trig Palin birther mill. He writes, "[T]he movie shows the press actually asking questions about it -- something that never came through in the mainstream media at the time."

Praised by McCain aide Steve Schmidt for its accuracy, "Game Change" indeed reminds us that the Trig story had a profound impact on the messaging and trajectory of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I'm not sure Sullivan fully grasps is that the main reason reporters pestered her with questions about Trig's birth was that Sullivan himself had republished lies about it on his highly influential blog without checking the facts first, an irresponsible act for which he's yet to apologize.

Andrew Sullivan, Savior Of The Republic

Andrew Sullivan affirms a reader's suggestion that he believes he is personally called to keep Sarah Palin out of the White House. I don't believe his services will be necessary. If she's nominated in 2012, she'll lose by an historic margin, with or without Sullivan's somewhat obsessive needling.

Sullivan On Trig: "None Of It Makes Sense"

I sent a post to Andrew Sullivan and heard back from him tonight:

This is wrong.

I have never stated that Trig is anyone's but Sarah Palin's.

What I have done is ask questions that can be factually verified by Palin to confirm it, given the bizarre account of her pregnancy and labor. I asked the campaign privately and publicly, and we still have no evidence except Palin's own conflicting accounts.

Any reasonable person reading what Palin did in those eight months would be befuddled by the illogic or insanity. None of it makes sense, and it is not libel to ask the subject to prove it.

Discourse That Gives Me The Blues

Obsessed with saving America from Sarah Palin, Andrew Sullivan again veers perilously close to misogyny:

Because many (straight) men found it hard to see past the boobs. Let's face it: if Palin looked like Golda Meir, there's no chance McCain would have picked her. And no one would currently give a damn. She is the Carrie Prejean of politics; and like the Ailes-tested fembots on Fox News. Women are not so dumb as to buy it. Men: well we all know what our weak spot is. We do not always think with our heads.

And if Barack Obama, one of the most attractive politicians of his time, had looked like Little Sammy Davis, Andrew?

Certifiable Birthers

Andrew Sullivan, godfather of the Palin birthers, misremembers:

Ben Smith argues against [Sarah] Palin's release of a birth certificate because he knows in advance that this would not stop the conspiracy theorists.

For the record, I have simply asked for some medical records establishing maternity since the day I found out about the weirdnesses of the story. If provided, I would regard the question as closed as the Obama birther certificate question. I tried to clear this up privately with the McCain campaign, but they had no clue either. The difference between the two cases, as Ben acknowledges, is that one public figure has provided easily available definitive evidence to end the debate; the other says she has - but hasn't.

Wrong. Sullivan published first, on Aug. 31, 2008, and asked questions later. He should admit that he was wrong to give mainstream credibility to a fabricated story without checking the facts. I'd bet at this point that Palin's refusing just to spite him. Besides, Ben Smith is probably right. Conspiracy theorists eat facts for breakfast.

The Hackosphere Matures

From Andrew Sullivan, a welcome if tardy acknowledgment that bloggers should observe traditional journalistic standards.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, when another web site published the fabricated story that Sarah Palin wasn't the mother of her youngest child, Sullivan linked to it before checking the facts and thus lent his substantial prestige to the most effective libel of the campaign.

With reasons that seem to have to do with professional pride and his considerable and understandable alarm at the idea of Palin ever getting close to the White House again, Sullivan hasn't quite given up on the pass-the-baby story. But whether it's a question of ethics, potential legal liability for his publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Group, or both, he's tightened up procedures at The Daily Dish. This week, when the National Inquirer published a story about the Palins, he wrote:

I'm not linking because I have no way to confirm the story.

Forgive Me, Father, For We Have Blogged

Focus groups interviewed by Democracy Corps, founded by Clinton ex-staffers James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, show that the mainstream media err in assuming that conservative Republicans are motivated by something so prosaic as racial bias:

[T]hese conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.

And yet reading the data, Andrew Sullivan insists that these conservative voters think Obama's rise "has something to do with black community organizations and Jewish money." Sullivan calls it "the return of Coughlinism," a reference to the anti-Semitic radio preacher, Fr. Charles Coughlin. Interesting that Carville and Greenberg minimize racism as a factor:

[T]he press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters’ beliefs – but they need to get over it.

Only to have Sullivan drag bigotry back in, and with an incendiary reference to Fr. Coughlin, just because one Republican with an active imagination mentioned ACORN and George Soros. That overreaching aside, I think Sullivan is right that the harshness of the conservatives' critique risks driving fiscally conservative but less paranoid independents into the Democrats' camp. I also agree that if the angriest, most frightened voters continue to dominate the party, Gov. Palin will be the 2012 nominee. The hope for a saner GOP: That she really loses big.