"I don't think there is any precedent in our history for the shameful manner in which the Left has treated Sarah Palin. Left-winger Andrew Sullivan gleefully posted a particularly disgusting example of the phenomenon today; it's a YouTube video titled "Red, White and MILF." Watch it only if you have a strong stomach. If you don't know what "MILF" means--I'm sure most of our readers don't--Google it.

I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left's decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse. The vileness of much of what passes for political "argument" on the Left has to be seen to be believed. The worst impulses of human nature have been not just unleashed, but rewarded. If you haven't looked at web sites like Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, you have no idea what the phrase "gutter politics" really means.

Nowhere has the vileness of the Left been more sickening than in its treatment of Governor Palin. It is interesting to contemplate what a semi-pornographic video about Barack Obama, playing on the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that are so disgustingly on display in Sullivan's video, would look like. Frankly, I can't imagine such a video being made, let alone featured on the web site of the once-proud Atlantic magazine. But on the Left, anything goes--the more slimy and disgusting, the better.

I think this represents, in part, a conscious effort to drive decent people out of politics. How many Republican women, observing the vicious treatment to which Sarah Palin has been subjected, will decide to steer clear of public life? More than a few, I suspect.

Barack Obama can't be blamed for all of his followers' vile actions, but, like it or not, he trails in his wake a howling mob of barbarians. If he is elected, these bottom-feeders will have achieved their goal, and some of them, at least, will be rewarded for doing their leader's dirty work. This is not, folks, your father's Democratic Party. "

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021890.php