David Broder: Take Sarah Palin Seriously.

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Syndicated columnist David Broder, in a suprisingly positive opinion piece by lamestream media standards, warns Sarah Palin's detractors that the first woman to win the vice presidential nomination of the Republican Party should be taken seriously. Here are a few citations from his column:

The snows that obliterated Washington last week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday-night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday-morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game — a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.

Broder says he was also impressed with Gov. Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2008. But the Palin he saw this weekend has learned much since the '08 campaign, and she is putting that knowledge to good use. This weekend, he says:

Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.

Her invocation of “conservative principles and common-sense solutions” was perfectly conventional. What stood out in the eyes of TV-watching pols of both parties was the skill with which she drew a self-portrait that fit not just the wishes of the immediate audience but the mood of a significant slice of the broader electorate.

Having armed herself with a "pitch-perfect" polulist message in a year when the national mood has become anti-encumbent and anti-estabishlishment, says the columnist, the former governor of Alaska has staked claim to strategic political ground:

In the present mood of the country, Palin is by all odds a threat to the more uptight Republican aspirants like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty — and, potentially, to Obama as well.

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Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand. The lady is good.

David Broder's full op-ed is well worth the read.

- JP