“How dare they!” shouted Rudy Guiliani, “How dare they question whether Palin will have enough time to spend with her children while vice president? When do they ever ask a man that question?”

Although Palin’s candidacy has revived McCain’s campaign, it certainly did not prevent her from taking a lot of flak. A recent Rasmussen poll indicated that over fifty percent of Americans believe that the media is trying to hurt Palin, while a mere one-tenth of that number believes the opposite.

As for The Sun, we did bring in guest columnist Rachel Quiqley to actually say something positive about Palin, but I expect a compliment about Palin from a regular columnist about as often as I expect a Milwaukee Brewers’ loss with C.C. Sabathia on the mound.

Among everyone, though, no one hates Palin as much as the Washington Democrats. Ironically, this last one may be a badge of honor, as the Washington Democrats are not embracing change but instead resisting it. That happens when a true change agent enters the picture.

Obama has tried to brand his typical partisan attacks on Republicans with this vacuous notion of change, but Palin has brought about change in Alaska not by attacking the Democrats, but by attacking the corruption in her own party. When she became governor, the first thing she pushed for and signed was a bipartisan ethics reform bill.

Obama has a hard time beating Palin on change, forcing him to resort to attacking her experience. That is quite the irony given both his level of experience and his rival in the Democratic primary.

Now I will concede that Obama and Biden have much more experience, but with the Democrats in charge of Congress, by what metric do they measure the results of their experience? By the record high number of symbolic resolutions Congress passed? By the record low number of public laws passed? By the record low Congressional approval ratings, dipping well below even Bush’s approval ratings?

Obama can claim that he can find the money to both cut taxes for the middle class and increase spending on programs like healthcare, but his claims have about as much meaning as one of his symbolic resolutions. Palin, on the other hand, has provided tangible energy relief to the people of Alaska and additionally has cut both the extraneous money Alaska spends and the earmarks it receives from Washington.

Granted, her record has not been perfect on spending, but that is not necessarily bad. It is easy to be perfect when you only talk a good game in the abstract; it is hard to be perfect when you have to bring about the change you speak of. But even with these imperfections, Palin has excelled as governor with an approval ratings in the eighties as recently as September 2008. That is a metric we can believe in.

That is the real Sarah Palin, but if you learn about her from the wrong sources, you may instead think she’s an evil “Jesus freak” with a dysfunctional family, even though her family and religion were still there when she successfully governed Alaska.

One of the best examples of this was CNN’s front-page article on Palin’s Pentecostal roots. Although the article was supposed to discuss politics and faith, it buried that topic in the middle of the article, choosing to lead the piece with a description of everything that makes Pentecostals look like psychos. As a result, senior McCain aides have strongly discouraged Palin to speak in Spanish when reaching out to Hispanics, for fear of the media accidentally labeling her as a crazy Pentecostal who “speaks in tongues.”

Likewise, when she encouraged people to pray that the plan for Iraq would match God’s plan, a simple, vague request for the commanders to do what is right and noble, many turned around and accused Palin of labeling the Iraq War as God’s plan.

But I actually would not mind the latter interpretation. If the Iraq War had been God’s plan, you would figure that He, unlike Bush, would also have had a plan to rebuild Iraq so that we could have left years ago in victory.

But speaking of divine revelation, many people have blamed Bristol Palin’s pregnancy on Sarah Palin’s abstinence-only policies, as if they had received this information from God Himself. However, I am going to rule the possibility of a divine revelation here. You do not call Sarah Palin a “Jesus freak” and then expect Jesus to reveal to you why Bristol Palin became pregnant.

The claim that Palin supports abstinence-only policies is based on a 2006 survey she filled out. When given a choice between abstinence and handing out condoms like candy, Palin said that she does not support “explicit sex-ed programs. “ But when you dig deeper beyond the false dichotomy in this survey, you will find that Palin does not consider a sex-ed program explicit if it includes a discussion about condoms.

So basically, rather than blaming Bristol’s pregnancy on her own actions and choices, the great talking heads have blamed it on a policy of Sarah Palin that is not actually her policy. No wonder why Sarah Palin may be hesitant to have an interview with these big talking heads.

So while Guiliani may say, “How dare they!” many have said, “How dare she!” The liberal feminists, who believe that only women like Hillary Clinton have all the right answers, the media gurus and pundits, who thought they could predict McCain’s pick, and the Washington Democrats, whose McCain-Bush analogy fell apart when they had to compare Palin to Cheney, are all saying “How dare she!”

When she started out as a small-town mayor, Palin had to answer to her own people, not these people. She did not let these special groups hijack her term as mayor or governor, and she is not about to let them hijack her campaign, either.

Mike Wacker is an assistant web editor at The Sun. He can be reached at mwacker@cornellsun.com. Wack Attack will appear alternate Fridays this semester.