WaPo liberals try to parse Gov. Palin's endorsements

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Watching the clueless liberals at the Washington Post attempt to parse the endorsements made by Sarah Palin is like watching a dog with a long tree branch in his mouth try to figure out how to get it through the door. Aaron Blake and Felicia Sonmez, writing in the column space of Chris Cillizza's The Fix take a stab at it and wind up scratching their collective heads:

"We took a look at Palin's recent endorsements and found that if there's any rhyme or reason to them, it's that they're as idiosyncratic and unpredictable as the former governor herself."

Actually, for anyone whose head isn't full of leftist mush, the governor's picks aren't all that difficult to decipher. In the long term view, they make perfect sense. All one needs to do is to remember what Sarah Palin is trying to accomplish. Think back to the years when Republicans enjoyed their greatest success, and it all resolves into sharp focus.

Sarah Palin's choices for governor and the U.S. Senate are for the most part conservatives with the best chances of prevailing in the primaries and general elections. Sometimes, as in the case of Carly Fiorina, that means passing on the more conservative choice. Chuck DeVore is unarguably more conservative than Fiorina, but strapped for cash and running in a blue state with only pockets of conservatism, he has little chance of winning the primary. Even if, by some miracle, DeVore should win the primary, he is a dead cinch to get crushed by Barbara Boxer's cash-heavy campaign chest.

In Congressional races, Gov. Palin can afford to bet on some candidates who face longer odds. In many of these races, there are more than just a single conservative candidate running in each primary, so if a few of her choices should lose, the chances are good that other conservatives will be nominated with as good or better odds of winning in the general election. But there are other variables in her calculations. Take, for example, her endorsement of Vaughn Ward for U.S. Congress in Idaho. Though Raul Labrador is a conservative and is supported by the local tea party there, no way was she going to endorse an immigration lawyer who has represented illegal aliens to help them stay in the U.S. Her political enemies would have used such an endorsement to try to paint her as soft on immigration, so Ward's loss doesn't hurt her as much as an endorsement for a victorious Labrador would have.

The authors do get one thing right. Where conservative, pro-life women stand a good chance of winning, Gov. Palin will endorse them. But her endorsements of John McCain and Joe Miller are a bit more than just personal, as they claim, or at least there is evidence for making that argument. J.D. Hayworth has a reputation for being a loose cannon, and he lost his Congressional reelection bid in the 2006 midterm election. McCain has the better shot to win both the primary and the general. Murkowski is pro-abortion, which is enough for Sarah Palin to pass on endorsing the incumbent, personal grudges notwithstanding.

Finally, there are factors involved which are related to Gov. Palin's own political future. Though all of her endorsement have gone to right of center candidates, some of her less hard core choices help to mute the thunder of those of her political enemies who have attempted to define her as a right-wing zealot. Her endorsements of McCain and Fiorina may have angered some in the conservative base, but they show the GOP establishment that she is a force they must reckon with if she chooses to make a presidential run some time in the future.

The flip side of that coin is that the conservative base and Tea Partiers can't dismiss her simply because she made a few endorsements which they didn't approve of. Gov. Palin, after all, stood up for Doug Hoffman against a liberal Republican, for Ward against a candidate who is softer on immigration, for Miller against the more moderate Murkowski, and for Nikki Haley against some really corrupt reprobates in South Carolina.

Then there's the libertarian factor. Despite the fact that Ron Paul has said some less than gracious things about Gov. Palin and her supporters, she endorsed his son Rand Paul in Kentucky. Her endorsements of Susan Martinez, Nikki Haley, Clint Didier and Angela McGlowan should likewise be acceptable to libertarian Republicans, even though every one of these candidates may not have been their first choices.

Though the WaPo liberal writers can't find the rhyme or reason in Sarah Palin's endorsements, it should be clear to Reagan Republicans by now. The governor is working very carefully to put the Reagan coalition back together. This is a task which is not easily accomplished, and in the process some toes invariably get stepped on. But only by reconstituting the alliance of small-government, values, fiscal and security-minded conservatives with libertarian Republicans, "mama grizzlies," and blue collar (Reagan) Democrats, can it be achieved. No Republican has even tried to do it since Ronald Reagan, even though this coalition propelled him to two landslide presidential victories. Sarah Palin realizes that this is the only way conservatives can rise from the ash heap that the neocons, led by two men named George Bush, left in their wake when they almost destroyed the Republican Party in the process of trying to be "kinder and gentler" in their domestic policies. Sarah Palin is trying to put the "Grand" back in the Grand Old Party, and against all odds, she seems right on track to do so.

- JP