Topic category:  Government/Politics

As the primary target of a liberal media establishment intent upon having Barack Obama in the White House, 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin may be the best person to beat Obama in 2012, IF she exposes the ugly truth about Obama and the liberal media establishment.

Unlike some other hopefuls for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Palin has the stuff needed to do what needs to be done.

Ironically, former Palin champion John Ziegler doesn't realize it.

In "The Sarah Palin I Know" (http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/12/the-sarah-palin-i-know/), Ziegler described Sarah Palin's decision to give him an interview in connection with his documentary ("Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted") as "an act which bought her enormous loyalty from me and which over the past two and a half years was repaid to her with compound interest."

The article does not demonstrate gratitude.

After interviewing Palin, Ziegler reported, "with the very best of intentions, [he] told her: 'You have to know, you can’t beat Obama in 2012. The media won’t let you. They won’t let him lose and the narrative about you is too negative to correct in three-and-a-half years.”

Perhaps Ziegler would be embarrassed to be proven wrong.

Bottom line: Ziegler advised Palin not to run in 2012 because she would not be allowed by the media to beat Obama right after that 2009 interview and he doesn't want her to prove him wrong, so he's switched from Palin defender to Palin attacker.

Ziegler made it crystal clear that he no longer considered himself indebted to Palin by proceeding to describe Palin as a sure loser if she runs against President Obama in 2012, stating "there was no way she could beat Obama in 2012, partially because of the choices she had recently made (resignation, Fox News instead of an over-the-air network, getting in bed with corrupt elements of the Tea Party, etc.)."

Ziegler's admittedly upset that a Palin lawyer asked him for a copy of a release Palin had signed for him when she gave him the interview.

Ziegler: "Finally, as one last straw, Palin’s lawyer kept bugging me about sending him the 'release' Sarah had signed for the movie, even though I had faxed it to her people at the time and I told him it was in remote storage because I had just moved. It seemed the only possible reason to even ask more than once about such a trivial issue was if they were somehow contemplating trying to make me the enemy, which was particularly aggravating because at virtually the same time I was going above and beyond the call of duty to help the new Palin film successfully navigate a potentially fatal legal issue. Regardless, it was insulting and clear that my loyalty meant very little to them. I was done. I could not longer work on behalf these people, no matter how good the Palins may be as or how clearly they have been wronged by the media."

Ziegler also is upset that Palin "appears to be disregarding the advice of [Ziegler] and others [not to run for President in 2012] as she seems ready to embark on this politically suicidal campaign."

Ziegler put it this way:

"...with Sarah’s bus tour of historic sites seemingly completed, and the biggest decision of her life directly in front of her, I wish her the best—I genuinely do. Without a doubt, she’s been subjected to the most biased media coverage in modern political history; enough to leave even the most thick-skinned of candidates shivering in the fetal position on the side of the road. Instead, she’s survived and, in many ways, prospered. For that, I will always respect and admire her. Everyone should.

"However, what she appears to be currently doing is almost certainly destructive to her cause and her country. I say this as the guy who risked $300,000 of his life savings to produce the very first pro-Sarah documentary back in 2009 (and the only one with her participation), while putting everything on the line to fight countless battles on her behalf—such as demonstrating outside David Letterman’s studios in New York after the late night talk show host made a joke about 14-year-old Willow Palin getting 'knocked up,' being dragged away in handcuffs from a laughable awards ceremony for the liberal ‘news’ anchor Katie Couric, getting regularly attacked as a guest by liberal hosts on MSNBC, and responding with $100,000 offers to charity to debate them on her behalf.

"I’ve fought so hard for Sarah, I’m almost unemployable.

"But in spite of being approached by Sarah’s husband Todd only a month ago and specifically discussing the possibility, I won’t be working on any Palin presidential campaign. Why? Well, first of all, contrary to what geniuses like Andrew Sullivan and Howard Dean may want you to believe, there is absolutely no way that she can be elected. I’ve told this to her directly; more than once. While many pundits mistakenly think what she is doing is some Trump-like PR stunt, I’m pretty convinced she is running and in doing so will damage the prospects of any conservative defeating Barack Obama in 2012."

Ziegler incidentally made a strong case that he once was an enthusiastic Palin supporter, but now he's peddling the Palin-can't-win message.

Ziegler offered unconfirmed conclusory generalizations: "Sarah’s entire operation is increasingly managed like a CIA field office;...she’s adopted a bunker mentality; ...she’s trusting the wrong people, some of whom [HE knows] are simply exploiting her. As a result, even those most loyal to her get tossed under the bus, with little or no effort to avoid the collateral damage."

Note to Ziegler: Throwing people "under the bus" is not necessarily a presidential disqualifier. Obama won a presidential election by finally throwing Rev. Jeremiah Wright "under the bus" and he hopes to win re-election by having lied about his relationship with ACORN in the last presidential debate without being generally exposed as a liar (like Congressman Anthony Weiner just was) and then throwing ACORN "under the bus" by signing the law defunding it and dropping it as a census partner.

The best Ziegler offered by way of explanation for singing his Sarah-can't-win song now is that "any chance of Sarah being able to win the White House in 2012 had...been destroyed" when she resigned as Governor of Alaska in 2009.

BUT, Ziegler acknowledged, however, that if "she hadn’t resigned, the state would have practically ground to a halt. Plus, thanks to having to defend herself legally against largely bogus ethics complaints, she needed money, which meant it was essential to take advantage of her limited window of celebrity. So she did her best with a really bad hand of cards."

Palin can make the case that she resigned because it was in the best interests of Alaska for her to do so, and that Obama never would have been elected without the complicity of the liberal media establishment.

As a result of Palin's dramatic and defensible decision, Zigler concluded that she had disqualified herself from running for president, at least in 2012. because "Obama [would have] the ultimate trump card against her: when things got tough you quit to become a rich celebrity while I was killing Osama bin Laden. Game, set, match."

Note to Ziegler: The decision to kill bin Laden would have been made by McCain (or Palin) too, and Obama's Osama bump is history.

Ziegler also lamented: "The worst part about the resignation from a political narrative perspective is that it also stripped away Palin’s greatest strength. She is clearly a fighter but it is impossible to make 'She will fight for you' the cornerstone of a campaign when she just quit her only big job, seemingly for personal gain."

Ziegler's own description of his Palin interview suggests Palin has what it takes to win: "The interview was spectacular. I defy anyone who buys into the conventional narrative that Sarah is stupid to listen to it and not change their mind. She was engaging, smart, honest, revealing, vulnerable, funny, and charismatic. When I showed her election footage that she’d never seen before and asked for her comments, she not once asked to pause the tape, and nailed every answer."

When Ziegler told Palin not to run against Obama, Obama was a popular president blaming his predecessor for America's problems, Obamacare had not yet been enacted, much less analyzed and challenged on constitutional grounds in court and Republican prospects in 2010 and 2012 were not looking good.

It may be that the ONLY way for a Republican to win will be to run against Obama AND the liberal media establishment that assured his election in 2012, in which case Palin may be Obama's worst nightmare.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.