By Dave Andrusko

Sarah Palin

Interesting back-to-back op-eds I happened across this afternoon which tell us a lot about the tectonic shifts that are quietly taking place beneath the political surface.

The first, by Richard Cohen, simultaneously trashed pro-abortion President Barack Obama (“the incredible shrinking Presidency”) and dismissed the American public as too stupid to understand what a transformational President Obama actually is. As is so often the case, no matter how incompetent Obama clearly is, his former supporters will always attribute his dilemma at least partially to an electorate that doesn’t know how good it could have had it. Cohen’s op-ed ran this morning in the Washington Post.

The other is a piece that ran last week in the New York Times that a friend just sent me the link to. “A Palin of Our Own,” by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traiser, is as unintentionally funny as it is intentionally vindictive toward former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

So what drives them crazy about the pro-life former GOP Vice Presidential nominee? Much of the usual drivel which is so omnipresent in the media I needn’t bother to reiterate. But then there is the charge that Palin is co-opting “feminism” -- this is a relatively new assault and fascinating on multiple levels, not the least of which is how apoplectic it makes her critics.

It seems as if the pro-abortionists cannot go two days without attacking Palin for her “greedy grab at claiming feminism as her own.” Truth be told, pro-abortion women such as Holmes and Traiser are incensed because Palin has done such a masterful job illuminating how genuine feminism is not only compatible with a pro-life position but is its necessary predicate.

In the end, Holmes and Traiser grudgingly and in a back-handed sort of way admire Palin. Not for what she believes in (which they find anathema), but because of how she has shaken up politics the way you would a kaleidoscope, giving it a whole new configuration.

Of course they must argue Palin is not the feminist real deal. But the caricature of Palin serves as a lesson for the “Left”: its cowardly behavior is allowing Palin to redefine what it means for women to break new ground politically.

Holmes and Traiser insist ludicrously that Palin offers a “diminutive model for behavior,” not because it’s true, but so that they can criticism Democrats for “The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians.”

Why are they incredibly unnerved? Because they grasp the central threat Palin poses to them: that “Sarah Palin and her acolytes” might “successfully redefine what it means to be a groundbreaking political woman.”

It’s merely a thought experiment, of course, but they talk about what if a “liberal” politician took “to Twitter to argue that big broods and a ‘culture of life’ are completely compatible with reproductive freedom.” They obviously would oppose such a candidate hammer and tong, but the point is Democrats must “discover, groom, promote and then cheer on” the “progressive” equivalent of Sarah Palin.

These columns share a joint bewilderment at the failures of Obama and the pro-abortion Democratic Congressional leadership. What they miss is that their preferred positions—including support for abortion on demand and mocking of women who disagree with them on a range of issues—are precisely the reason Democrats are becoming the “incredible shrinking political party.”