Be afraid, Arianna. Be very afraid... (Updated)

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On the website which bears her name, ersatz-conservative-turned-leftist Arianna Huffington tries to figure out Gov. Palin's appeal:

I've been thinking about this paradox: the most important political ad of 2010 so far did not play on television, and came from someone not currently running for any office. It was Sarah Palin's latest web video, "Mama Grizzlies."

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Palin's message operates on a level deeper than policy statements about the economy or financial reform or health care or the war in Afghanistan.

To really understand her appeal, we need less policy analysis and more psychology. Specifically, we need to hear from that under-appreciated political pundit Carl Jung.

It's not Palin's positions people respond to -- it's her use of symbols. Mama grizzlies rearing up to protect their young? That's straight out of Jung's "collective unconscious" -- the term Jung used to describe the part of the unconscious mind that, unlike the personal unconscious, is shared by all human beings, made up of archetypes, or, in Jung's words, "universal images that have existed since the remotest times." Unlike personal experiences, these archetypes are inherited, not acquired. They are "inborn forms... of perception and apprehension," the "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity."

This is the realm Palin is working in...

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As a matter of fact, another very popular Republican politician once used the image of a bear in an ad.

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And a very successful ad for Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign in 1984. It raised the question of whether Walter Mondale would be strong enough to stand up to the lurking bear -- in this case, the Soviet Union. Reagan won 525 electoral votes to Mondale's 13.

Like Palin, Reagan was not thought to be a policy heavyweight, and, like her, he was often ridiculed by the punditocracy. And, like Reagan, Palin has come to prominence in a time of national crisis, a state of affairs in which appeals to the collective unconscious are much more powerful -- and dangerous -- than in normal times.

What a load of moonbat manure! Leave it to an elitist "progressive" to indulge in over-analysis and excessive intellectualizing.

Huffington and her fellow travelers on the left will never understand Sarah Palin nor the reason why she makes such a solid connection with everyday Americans. All the talk about archtypes and courses in Jungian psychology won't help them understand, either. To get it, the moonbats would have to understand everyday Americans, and as someone who rarely ventures into flyover country, Arianna doesn't have the first clue about common folks.

The average Joe and Jane out there are very much concerned with issues. They are deeply concerned with jobs and economy; with how they will ever be able to feed, clothe and educate their kids; with how record debt and deficits will hinder those same children and grandchildren; with a federal government which has grown too big for its britches; with a health care bill they never wanted in the first place and now want repealed; with the march away from the Republic of the founders towards a socialist state like those which are failing in Europe; and with an administration and a congress which won't shut up long enough to listen to their concerns.

These everyday men and women don't need detailed white papers from Sarah Palin to know that she and they are on the same chapter and verse. They have heard enough of her speeches and read enough of her Facebook Notes to understand that she is one of them. They share the same disgust and mistrust in an unresponsive federal government which does as it pleases, not what they want it to do. They share the same hopes and dreams for the future of their children, and they have the same concerns that our leftist government is killing those hopes and dreams.

Huffington is dead wrong. It is about issues. But much more than that it's about the fact that Sarah, Joe and Jane have the same position on those issues. A position 180 degrees away from the collectivist position of Barack, Markos and Arianna. If Huffington sounds worried in her op-ed, she has every reason to fret. Her left-world is about to come crashing down around her.

h/t: Smith

Update: More from Moe Lane, Mark Whittington, Noel Sheppard and Nicole Coulter.

- JP