Palin and Perry: Brave and Bold

*
From a Bernie Quigley opinion piece published Monday on The Hill's Pundits Blog:

"The president is operating out of a fundamental misunderstanding of history, which might be called the New York view: that the tenor and temperament of America today is the same as it was when Eisenhower handed the keys over to Kennedy. It is a static view of history, but history is dynamic, not static. The South and Texas were still honorably submissive in 1960 to the will and whims of New York & Co. as per the conditions of conquest set in 1865. No longer. And so today Perry speaks up. Last week he wrote a letter to the EPA asking it to withdraw its finding that greenhouse gases threaten Americans, alleging the findings are based on manipulated data. Sarah Palin opposed points of the Copenhagen agreements as well, with an editorial in The Washington Post."

Quigley says a sea change may have been reached last week when William Shatner and Sarah Palin each read excerpts from the other's autobiography on "The Tonight Show" and then strolled off the stage arm in arm as the audience roared:

"A threshold was crossed: For the first time major, mainstream advertisers are treating Palin fairly. Late night entered the mainstream where Palin has always been. Marketing-wise, you might say that Sarah Palin has arrived. Obama could be only a backdrop now in 2010 and 2012 while the important debate rises between the two factions of Republicans, as it was in the recent election at NY-23 where Perry and Palin supported the Conservative Party candidate." 

"Dan Balz has a convincing essay in The Washington Post this week making the claim that the future of the Republican Party rests with the governors. He cites Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, Perry, Palin, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty and others. But Palin and Perry are speaking to the public while the others are speaking to the faithful. They are being brave when it is time to be brave, which is now."

Read Quigley's full op-ed here.

- JP