Hating Sara Palin. This is a specific disease of the American political left that has metastasized from a chic political parlor game played in all the “right” circles, to a 2008 campaign prerogative (Obama never looked weak or beatable until she joined the ticket) and now into a full blown dementia. What we have seen in the years following the 2008 presidential election was mild compared to the complete package of full blown bat-shit crazy that she has had directed toward her since the Safeway shootings in Tucson.

Look – I like her. I thought her addition to the ticket was a shot in the arm that few other possibilities could bring. She was Tea Party before the Tea Party was cool. She speaks with a voice that resonates with a large segment of the right. Is she the answer for the future of the Republican Party? I don’t know. I don’t think that decision has to be made today but I do think that she deserves the chance to show what she offers.

Why does the left hate her so much? Why does she have the power to drive even the semi-rational on the left insane? Those are questions that several folks (far more qualified than me) have tried recently to answer. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, Ace of the blog Ace of Spades HQ, Scott Johnson of Powerline and Robert Stacy McCain of The Other McCain are among those searching for an answer.

Here’s what I think. There are 5 reasons for the Hate Sarah Syndrome:

Reason 1 – Leftist men hate her. They hate her because she is far more virile, vibrant and dominant than their “beta male”/metrosexual asses. I can hear them now, “She shoots guns! Oh, my! She is a beastly woman. I mean she shoots caribou, she clubs fish to death and she lives in Alaska for goodness sake! I don’t know anyone who lives in Alaska; do they even have a Dean and Deluca there?”

How many liberals do you think have seen meat or fish unless it came wrapped in plastic and they bought it at Whole Foods – organically grown, of course. How many liberals do you think have field dressed a deer or cooked and eaten wild game in the field. How many even know what it takes to maintain the very food stocks that they take for granted? How many would starve if the food industries that they rail against collapsed?

Remember this classic?

Reason 2 – Leftist men hate her because she is far more attractive than their leftist female partners…and they know that their female (and some of their male) partners, secretly dig Todd. Todd is a strapping dude. Snow machine champion, outdoorsman, he’s what people think of when they think of Alaska…an alpha male.

Reason 3 – Leftist women hate her because they actually do dig Todd (and it isn’t cool for feminists to be attracted to alpha males)…and their same sex partners do as well. It is highly possible that some of their male partners do too. Todd really is a strapping dude.

Reason 4 – Leftist women hate her because they see in her the success they want but have not been able to achieve in a liberal environment (because liberal environments are really misogynistic) and they also see that she is stronger, smarter, more confident and more dominant than their leftist male or female partners and oh, yeah – see also Reasons 1 and 2.

Reason 5 – Both leftist men and women hate her because she has the family that they wish that they had, and would have had if only they hadn’t aborted them. These kids are strong, independent, free and vigorous. Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. Track is a military man, serving his country in Iraq, Bristol has prospered even after a teen pregnancy. These aren’t kids that play video games all day, join the chess club and are disrespectful to their parents, they beat those kids up. They have solid family unity that has withstood even the ravages of Kathy Griffin and Levi Johnson.

Leftist feminists…including Andrew Sullivan (I know, a distinction without a difference), hate her for having the temerity to give birth to a special needs child, Trig. Doesn’t she know that it was just a tumor, an aggregation of defective cells that had no right to survive? Doesn’t she know that, as a woman, she let the feminist movement down by showing her courage to carry a Down syndrome baby to term when so many “evolved” women terminate their “clumps of cells” for far less serious reasons – for convenience?

Backwoods Barbie, Caribou Barbie. That ignorant woman. Hank Stuever, staff writer for the Washington Post, said this in his review of her show, “Who is this woman, this fruit bat in fleece and Gore-Tex, clenching the side of the rock face above a glacier, screaming “Tahhd! Tahhd!” at her husband, piercing the tranquility of the Alaskan paradise?” Snide, sarcastic remarks. Demonization. Blood libel over the Tucson shootings. Venom and vitriol. Irrational hate. All in a day’s work for Sarah Palin, permanent thorn in the side of the American left.

Think maybe the left hates her because they want to be her, that they are painfully and mortally envious of what she has? Is that why she has so much power over them? Are they afraid of her?

You betcha!