Sigh. Another day, another Sarah Palin kerfluffle in the mainstream dino-media. She’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t.

Let it first be said that while I like and respect Sarah Palin personally, the only reason I’d vote her for President would be if she were the only one running against Barack Obama. Is she a political lightweight? Grossly unqualified to be President? I don’t know, I could say the same thing about the present occupant of the Oval Office; besides, I’ve already told you who I’d pick were it my choice.

That being said, it just amazes me how anything Palin does (or does not do) or says (or does not say) sends the liberal left into a tizzy that, frankly, both astonishes and amazes, and I can’t figure it out for the life of me. I mean, the left absolutely hated Dick Cheney, equating him to something just a little less than the devil incarnate (assuming, of course, that the left even thought in religious concepts like “the devil”), and they despised George W. Bush almost as much, maybe even more.

(Ed. note: Of course, that raises the question of why so-called liberals, who profess as their core values tolerance and acceptance, find it so effortless to demonize and hate those on the right. You can say the conservative right does the same thing, but that should be quite understandable – after all, according to the liberal left conservatives are naturally intolerant and unaccepting, not to mention racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, myopic, and plenty of other “ics” and “ists”!)

But I digress.

How is it that Sarah Palin is so able to live rent-free in the heads of the liberal left? I mean she absolutely drives them bonkers and twists their panties in an absolute tizzy with every appearance she (and any other Palin, for that matter) either makes or doesn’t make, and any syllable she utters or doesn’t utter. Why is she such a lightning rod? After all, if she’s so unsophisticated, stupid, unqualified, clueless, annoying, infuriating, and lacking in credibility as we’re constantly being told she is, why the obsession? Why not just ignore her and allow her to gradually disappear off the political radar screen until she’s just another afterthought in American political history?

Maybe a mystery like that is best left to Anna Chapman to help solve.

Might it be that deep down the liberal left fears her and feels threatened by her like no other? If so, why is that? Is it because she’s a woman who is attractive, charismatic, successful, pro-choice, pro-God, and pro-guns, and therefore doesn’t fit the tired mold of what the liberal left thinks women should be and act like? Is it because she, like other strong, self-confident, and conservative women like S.E. Cupp, Michelle Malkin, and Michele Bachmann are 180-degrees away from washed-up, has-been feminist icons like Jane Fonda and her ilk – is that what it is? That Sarah Palin is a threat to modern-day feminism (and by association, the liberal left) because she represents a certain dynamic that reflects a passing of the torch, reminding them of everything they once were and had but no longer? Hmmm…

Instapundit links to a Roger L. Simon column that offers up a similar theme. Writing of the liberal left’s unprecedented meltdown this past weekend, Simon writes that, at the very core of their outrage against Palin, the tea parties, and the conservative right is that they simply can’t escape the so-called “glory days” of the Sixties and Seventies that made them everything they were and still are today:

The liberal intelligentsia of our society may not be as sick as Jared Loughner — that would be hard — but they are exhibiting a depth of neurosis that borders on a collective personality disorder. And, to play psychoanalyst, I think this disorder points straight back to unresolved issues related to the [radicalism and violent protest] experiences of the sixties and seventies discussed above. The left’s confused and ambivalent attitude toward violence has never gone away and has now been projected out on their opponents.

Exacerbating the situation — and increasing the left’s anger — was their recent electoral defeat and the attendant failure of Keynesian economics to deal with the financial crisis. Their ideology is dissolving around them. The attempts to blame the behavior of a clinical paranoid schizophrenic on the words of right-wing politicians and pundits are the acts of desperate people.

I think Simon’s onto something here. Look at all the poster children of the liberal left today – whether it be on MSNBC, or “The View”, or in the Krugmans and Dowds of the New York Times or the Eugene Robinsons and Dana Milbanks of the Washington Post – and all you see is anger, resentment, and indignation. And who is the primary target of this blatant hostility? Sarah Palin. And I’m just wondering why. I mean, what has she done to deserve all that hostility? Sure, she ran for VP, but so did Geraldine Ferraro. Sure, she hunts and fishes and shoots guns, but so do a lot of other political figures. So what gives?

I’m thinking now writing this: they’re freakin’ jealous – jealous that the torch has been passed to a new generation that doesn’t fit their outdated worldview and worn out political paradiagm. Like the grand old dame who sees the pretty young things getting all the attention, or the old veteran ballplayer who played for peanuts and now sees these million-dollar contracts being handed out to nobodys, or the stuck-in-a-rut college professor who looks out on his class and sees young men and women with futures as bright and promising as moonlight in a martini (yes, I nicked that great metaphor from “Moonstruck”).

Or maybe someone else can help me out here, because otherwise I just don’t get it. In the meantime, I’ll just encourage Sarah to keep doing what she’s doing, because anyone who can continue to live rent-free in the minds of the liberal left in a way that unhinges them and keeps them thrashing and lashing out hatefully and irrationally must be doing something right, since by doing so they reveal their true nature for everyone to see.