Yesterday news broke that Willow Palin, the 16 year old daughter of 1/2 term governor Sarah, took to Facebook in a homophobic slur rant against someone who complained about Palin’s reality show:

During the premiere of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” Sunday night — a boy named Tre who went to school with the Palin kids wrote a status update that read, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska, is failing so hard right now.”

The comment sparked an intense response from Willow — who replied on the boy’s wall, “Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I’ve seen pictures of, your disgusting … My sister had a kid and is still hot.”

Willow followed up that comment with another that read, “Tre stfu. Your such a f**got.”

Bristol Palin also got in on the smacktalk — writing a message to Tre saying, “You’re running your mouth just to talk sh*t.”

This sparked the GOP to come to the defense of Willow, writing this off as “kids being kids”. Here’s the statement from Tammy Bruce of GOProud:

“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. This, however, has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she said on Facebook. The ‘slur’ used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week.  Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader.  Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.

“The angry misogynistic left and their accomplices in the main stream media have been unable to take down Governor Palin – no matter how hard they have tried. Unable to take her down directly they now have decided to try to hurt her by attacking the most important thing in her life – her family.

“Any person, gay or straight, who participates in this cheap political smear should be ashamed of themselves.”

And Robert Stacy McCain has this to say:

This is not “homophobia.” This is just how teenagers insult each other. One might criticize the behavior by Willow and Bristol as indecorous andunladylike, but somehow I’m having trouble accepting TMZ as an arbiter of decorum, to say nothing of the gay blogs now viciously dogpiling on the Palin girls.

And here you have the right showing their place under a rock. There has been a lot of talk lately of the increasing number of teenage suicides resulting from such “teenage insults”. But how dare we think the wingnuts would begin to recognize real problems that are facing our youth.

But the defense of Palin has taken even a more ironic turn. Robert Stacy McCain also did another post, quoting the GOProud statement and placing the 2008 loss of the McCain/Palin ticket squarely on the shoulders of John McCain. Yeah John McCain does deserve a lot of the blame for this, but this piece of evidence that RSM pulls out is just killing me:

What you see here is the chart of the Real Clear Politics poll average for the 2008 presidential campaign, showing that by Sept. 8, the McCain-Palin ticket was leading by 2.9 points — with the RCP average for the Republican ticket (48.3) on that date being the highest poll showing of McCain vs. Obama at any point during the entire campaign, even before either candidate had won his party’s nomination.

I remember when McCain took the lead a week after picking Palin as his running mate. But then look how quickly that lead evaporated and Obama started stomping him. What happened then? Oh yeah. People started learning who Sarah Palin was. She started doing interviews (see Katie Couric) and had a debate. America was smart. They didn’t vote for a pretty face, but instead chose someone with actual leadership qualities.

But the wingnuts, like RSM, want to ignore other polls, like this one:

Sarah Palin is viewed unfavorably by nearly 50 percent of Americans, a new CBS Newspoll finds, a significant challenge for her to overcome should she enter the 2012 presidential race.

Palin is viewed favorably by just 22 percent of Americans, according to the poll – including less than half (44 percent) of Republicans. Twenty-one percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats view her favorably.

A 22% favorability rating! That’s lower than Dick Cheney.

So while the wingnuts try to spin Palin into someone being loved by Americans, they ignore the fact that she is a national punch line. Sure Palin can bring out a crowd, but so can NASCAR, where people go in hopes of seeing a wreck.