Mike Metroulas: Palin and the 'Conservative Intelligentsia' Backlash

The Sarah Palin who spoke at the 2008 RNC convention can win in 2012
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Mike Metroulas, libertarian contributor to Big Journalism, comments on the fallout from the recent Politico hit piece on Gov. Palin:

A recent Politico piece focusing on a “conservative intelligentsia” backlash against Sarah Palin playing identity politics gleans this nugget from George Will:

Asked if the GOP would remain the party of ideas if Palin captures the nomination, Will said: “The answer is emphatically no.”

I think self-government and individual liberty are grand ideas. Principled and limited governance is a grand idea. I’m not sure what ideas Will thinks will be lost here, but in my estimation, the federal government does not exist as some sort of symposium for over-intellectualizing or a platform for one party to promote their own agenda. Sure, that’s where we’ve been for a very, very long time (around 220 years), but wanting to scale that back is one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. That’s what Palin brings to the table. Her current media appearances are not indicative of how she would govern, nor are they indicative of how she would conduct herself on the campaign trail.

The piece also quotes the Manhattan Institute’s Heather McDonald as saying:

“She is living up to the most skeptical assessment of her.”

I’m not so sure. The most skeptical assessment of her was that she was an absolute ignoramus whose 15 minutes of fame would be over right after Obama won the election, and we’d never hear from her again. To the chagrin of many, that didn’t happen.

The piece goes on to state:

For now, however, Palin’s appeal is largely rooted in the sympathy she’s gleaned from her loudly voiced resentments toward the left, the news media and the GOP establishment.

I don’t buy this for one second. Any wars of words she has engaged in recently have had little to do with her appeal, they have only served to galvanize her most ardent supporters, while possibly turning off other people. This is sloppy because she is not actually campaigning, nor can we say with any certainty that she is going to.

The media’s hysteria over Sarah Palin’s nomination threw her entire identity, both political and personal, into the deepest recesses of the American psyche. Painting Palin merely as a sympathetic figure, as this Politico piece does, is to deny her real appeal completely, which revolves around a genuine impulse in America that yearns for a much-needed pruning of our federal government. Much of the electorate is way beyond caring what the “conservative intelligentsia” or the GOP establishment has to say. Many Americans are more interested in what people like Sarah Palin have to say.

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- JP