Bearing Drift: Sarah Palin is crazy like a fox

From Virginia-based Bearing Drift, Steven Osborne has posted an interesting commentary on Sarah Palin that speaks to the former governor's political power:

Her supporters say that she is the leader of a revolution, her opponents say that she is crazy. It seems now, ever so clear that Sarah Palin is crazy; crazy like a fox. Consider these recent moves; her resignation, her farewell speech, and her facebook takedown of Obamacare. In all of these instances Sarah Palin has had the last laugh.

[...]

She has a record as governor and as chairwoman of a major energy commission before that, and if one wants to be technical, our current President has been in public life since 1996, Sarah Palin has been in public life since 1992. Far from being politically irrelevant, Sarah Palin has proven that her resignation has not spelled the end to her relevancy in American politics.

[...]

The public reacted positively when Sarah Palin led the charge against the end-of-life provision, and the politicians reacted accordingly. That demonstrates, more than any poll, the political reality.

With that last sentence, Osborne makes a great point. Too many polls have large margins of error, oversample certain demographics, design questions for a desired result, etc.

Sarah Palin campaigned one day in December for Saxby Chambliss and, by all accounts, drove his vote total up by 10 percent. Now in August, she posted a few op-eds on her Facebook Notes page, and the provision she called attention to in a proposed piece of major legislation was dropped. And she managed this without granting a single interview, calling a press conference or launching an ad campaign.

In the final analysis, Sarah Palin turned the tables on the same media which for a year has purposefully marginalized her. Last week she played them like Alison Krauss plays the fiddle:



- JP