Ben Smith: Sarah Palin and neocon advisors part company

"The personnel shift carries an ideological charge."
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Ben Smith reports that Gov. Palin and two neoconservative foreign policy advisers who had been writing speeches and providing her with foreign policy advice since the days of the McCain campaign have parted ways:

An aide to Palin, Tim Crawford, confirmed that Orion Strategies' Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb are no longer working for her PAC. They parted, both sides said on good terms.

"Randy flat out said, 'We can't give you the time,'" Crawford said.

"I very much enjoyed my time working with Governor Palin and wish her and her family all the best," Scheunemann said in an email. "If she decides to run for any office again, she will be a formidable candidate."

Crawford said they've been replaced by Peter Schweizer, a writer and fellow at the Hoover Institution who blogs regularly at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace.

Smith points out that the change may indicate a move on the former governor and vice presidential candidate's part to further distance herself from the neoconservative philosophy:

Palin parted ways with that aggressive internationalism in a speech yesterday, condemning U.S. involvement in Libya and laying out a more cautious philosophy of the use of force. Schweizer has articulated a more skeptical view of the use of American force and promotion of democracy abroad.

"Egypt does a lot of things wrong, but they have also been pro-American on a lot of levels," he wrote of Obama's support for protesters in Egypt -- which was being roundly criticized by neoconservatives for being insufficiently vigorous. "When protests broke out in Iran earlier during his tenure in the White House, Obama was not willing to openly back them, at least until he came under considerable fire. But now he is supporting them in Egypt?"

Schweizer has also been skeptical of American involvement in Libya, which he compared to Vietnam, speculated that France is "on the brink of a violent civil war" between radical Muslims and its resurgent right.

[More]

We've long believed that Gov. Palin's libertarian streak was at odds with the neocons in her organization, and the replacement of Scheunemann and Goldfarb with Schweizer could be a sign that she is fine tuning her staff for a 2012 presidential run as the small government Reagan conservative she has always been.

When Weekly Standard's founder and editor William Kristol, Goldfarb's mentor of sorts, began to back away from his support of Gov. Palin, we thought that it was an indication that neoconservatives had finally realized that she was never going to be the rubber stamp for neocon thinking that they hoped she would be. Today, Kristol confirmed our suspicions by attacking Gov. Palin when he really didn't have to. When you don't toe their interventionist line, neocons sure can get snippy. Memo to Bill K: What part of "We can't afford any more foreign adventures" don't you comprehend?

Not only does the personnel shift allow Sarah Palin to distance herself from neoconservatism, but ABC's John Berman observes that it also "removes one of the few remaining links" to John McCain's 2008 campaign organization.

Peter Schweizer's Hoover Institution bio is here.

h/t: Tony Lee

- JP

Quote of the Day (August 19, 2010)

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Suki at SukiProject:

"Today is one of the first days in over a year that I did not bother looking at the [Reason] site... and I see I didn't miss a damn thing, unless you call Radley Balko managing to mention the Ground Zero Mosque... without bashing Sarah Palin an improvement. That is another staple of Reason; if the Cordoba Mosque is to be mentioned, Sarah Palin must be bashed. If there are Cosmotarian Sacred Scrolls, this must be one of the top edicts and Radley must be drinking virgin martinis for this infraction... So, Libertarian Magazine of Record, give me a reason to keep reading you instead of Slate, The Nation, The New Republic, or the World Socialist Web Site. They have the same attitude you do when real property is owned by a group of people who worship anything besides Ayn Rand. "

- JP

Sarah Palin confirms Rand Paul endorsement (Updated)

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After predicting Thursday that an endorsement by Sarah Palin was in the works, Rand Paul's campaign manager claimed Monday in a press release that it's a done deal:

National political icon and conservative leader Sarah Palin has endorsed Dr. Rand Paul in his bid for United States Senate from Kentucky. The Paul campaign has received a generous donation from Governor Palin’s PAC.

Sarah Palin has clearly seen that Rand Paul supports smaller, constitutional government and is taking the fight to the career politicians and will shake up the tax and spend crowd in Washington D.C.

“Governor Palin is providing tremendous leadership as the Tea Party movement and constitutional conservatives strive to take our country back,” Rand said.

“Sarah Palin is a giant in American politics. I am proud to receive her support.”

Politico's Ben Smith notes that the claimed endorsement strengthens the alliance between the Tea Party movement, Ron Paul libertarians and Gov. Palin's conservative grass roots, but adds a cautionary note:

Paul is claiming the endorsement, but worth noting that we haven't had a statement from Palin yet.

As of this Noon CST posting, we haven't seen anything on the governor's Twitter or Facebook Notes pages.

If true, this alliance could go a long way toward quashing all the chatter from the left and their trained media circus about the Tea Party movement "falling apart" -- which, of course, it was never in any danger of doing.

On the downside, Gov. Palin risks losing the support of many Kentuckians who were backing true conservative Bill Johnson, a long shot in the Senate race. Among them is Lisa Graas, a colleague and dear friend of ours who has worked tirelessly for Gov. Palin.

h/t: BluegrassBulletin.com

First Update: The Grayson camp voices its skepticism of the endorsement:

But the campaign manager for Paul's primary rival, GOP Secretary of State Trey Grayson, pointed out that Palin had not issued a statement of support for Paul or commented directly on the reported campaign donation, leaving open the possibility that she had stopped short of offering a formal endorsement.

Nate Hodson called the Paul campaign's announcement "a release by a campaign that has demonstrated previously the ability to report things that are not true or half-truths." Asked if the Grayson camp believed Paul was fabricating support for its candidate, Hodson replied: "It wouldn't be the first time."

Second Update: Says Dave Weigel at The Washington Independent:

TWI’s Rachel Hartman, digging into FEC filings, has not seen a Paul donation yet from SarahPAC — records only go through December 31, 2009.

Third Update: Ben Pershing at the Washington Post:

But is it true? Does the donation mean she is solidly behind his bid?

"My understanding is the check is considered to be an endorsement," Paul said in a phone interview Monday, explaining that Palin's political action committee, Sarah PAC, gave $2,000 to Paul's campaign in recent days.

Paul added that he had not spoken to Palin directly but that his aides had talked to her representatives, who conveyed her support for his campaign. Paul said those conversations would continue and that he hoped she would visit Kentucky at some point to do an event for him.

Um, excuse us, but Paul has not spoken directly to Gov. Palin? On something as important as a political endorsement, are we the only ones who think that the process should at least involve some degree of actual direct communication between endorser and endorsee? A political endorsements, by definition, should be completely unambiguous.

Fourth Update: Sarah Palin has indeed endorsed Rand Paul. Ben Pershing has received confirmation from the Palin Camp:

Her spokeswoman just sent over this statement from the former Alaska governor: "I'm proud to support great grassroots candidates like Dr. Paul. While there are issues we disagree on, he and I are both in agreement that it's time to shake up the status quo in Washington and stand up for common sense ideas."

- JP

Sarah Palin is still fighting the establishment

Those who have followed Sarah Palin's political career know that she became governor of the 49th state by challenging and defeating a corrupt old boy network that was Alaska's GOP establishment. She's still fighting the Republican Party establishment, but this time she has Washington D.C., not Juneau, in her sights. John Browne, in an op-ed in Sunday's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says that the GOP's 2008 vice presidential candidate has aligned herself with the small government, or libertarian, wing of the Republican Party:

Last week, Sarah Palin made an important speech to a major financial audience in Hong Kong. It was clearly an opening bid for presidential candidature. But what sort of Republican is Palin and would she be acceptable to the Republican Party, let alone a majority of American voters?

[...]

Sarah Palin is definitely from outside Washington. Also, she is an attractive woman, filled with self-confidence and proven magnetism.

However, the Republican Party is deeply split between the traditional big-government establishment and the small-government libertarians, who seem to be gaining ground fast not only in America, but also in Germany and France.

In her Hong Kong speech, Palin spoke as a libertarian Republican capitalizing on the increasing support shown for Ron Paul's politics. She also praised Reagan and Thatcher, two notable libertarian conservatives. But is Palin really a libertarian or has she been pandering to her libertarian conservative audiences?

If Palin is a true libertarian, how possibly can the Republican establishment accept her?

At present, it appears that Palin is disapproved of very strongly by the powerful Republican establishment.

[...]

However, polls show an increasingly strong resentment of big government. The high taxes and falling consumer demand resulting from it appear to fly directly in the face of economic recovery. There is a growing appetite for the small government and small business that history shows lead to lower taxes, higher employment and prosperity.

If Sarah Palin is a true libertarian Republican, she could be set to ride a massive popular wave. She is certainly a possible candidate.

If the Republican Party establishment truly wants to regain power, it may have to accept a route led by a libertarian and decidedly "provincial" woman. They may wince, but Sarah Palin may be the only one capable of returning them to the White House.

To answer one of Browne's rhetorical questions, no, we don't think that Sarah Palin is a true libertarian, but she is a libertarian conservative. Actually, she is what we would call a New Federalist, but the differences between libertarian conservatives and New Federalists are so slight that they may be little more than semantic.

The term New Federalism emerged during the Nixon administration in 1969 as the label for a policy plan to turn over control of some federal programs to state and local governments and to provide block grants and revenue sharing. The term was expanded on in the Reagan years to more broadly define a political philosophy of devolution, or of transfer of administrative powers from the federal government to the states. The primary objective of New Federalism, unlike that of eighteenth-century Federalism, is to restore to the states and to the people some of the autonomy and power which they lost to the federal government as a consequence of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. At the time of George W. Bush, it was widely believed that he would govern as a New Federalist, but his administration was mark by neoconservative policies which turned out to be big government and big spending policies, and Ronald Reagan's coalition of conservatives, libertarians, independents and blue collar Democrats began to fall apart.

The term New Federalism should not be confused with the New Federalist Party, which does not support the principles of New Federalism, as defined by Ronald Reagan. On the contrary, that party has more in common with eighteenthth century federalists, and it still honors Alexander Hamilton as its founder and philosophical leader. Reagan New Federalists are more in the tradition of Jefferson and Jackson. Nor should the term libertarian conservative be confused with the Libertarian Party, from which libertarian conservatives part company, mostly on social issues and the limits of individual liberty. And therein lies a problem. There is no one good term which describes the small-government conservative. There was once a time when simply saying that one was a conservative fit the bill, but the rise of neoconservatism and the prevarication of the likes of moderates David Brooks, David Frum, et al calling themselves "conservatives" has drained most of the meaning out of the word.

President Reagan attempted to codify New Federalism by Executive Order in 1987, but Bill Clinton revoked it with an Executive Order of his own in 1998, which restored the unconstitutional role the federal government had assumed since FDR's time. There is even a New Federalist political platform which defines the principles of New Federalism and calls for rolling back those abridgements and infringements of the rights of the people and the states as plainly set forth in the founding documents. It awaits the election of the first true conservative president since Reagan for re-implementation.

Whether we call her a New Federalist or a libertarian conservative, Sarah Palin is the one political figure who appears to have the momentum and the popular appeal to put herself in a position to reverse the 20-year trend away from Ronald Reagan's winning principles.

- JP

Sarah Palin vs. The Neocons

Sarah Palin enjoys considerable support among libertarian Republicans, and many libertarian independents are giving her a second look. Adam Brickley believes that the Sarah Palin John McCain scooped up out of Alaska to be his running mate was much more libertarian than the vice presidential candidate who had to support McCain's policy positions on the stump. What we are seeing now, says Brickley, is "more of the original, pre-McCain Sarah Palin":

"A lot has been said lately about the idea that Sarah Palin is positioning herself as a the libertarian in the 2012 field... This is exactly I have been saying for months, and exactly how I have seen a potential Palin run shaping up for years (VP run or no VP run)."

Will Sarah Palin be able to bring libertarians and conservatives together to start rebuilding the coaltion that Ronald Reagan led to win two successive lopsided presidential election victories?

"So – that is my view of the brave new world of “Sarahtarianism” – which is really nothing more than the classic Sarah Palin finally emerging on the national stage. We’ll see just how libertarian she can get when we see her upcoming memoir Going Rogue, but I’m guessing that she will use that book to complete the transformation we’ve all been talking about."

Some libertarians are still not comfortable with Palin, largely due to a perception that she is too close to the neoconservatives, as Phil Manger observed in an op-ed that was mostly supportive of the former governor:

"She was accompanied to Hong Kong by Randy Scheunemann, a foreign policy advisor to John McCain and advisor to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Scheunemann was also president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization that beat the drums for the Iraq invasion. Palin's pre-McCain-campaign views on Iraq were not very clear, although I got the impression she was harboring some doubts. I worry that she might be taken over and 'managed' by neocons, like she was during the campaign."

But it was in that same Hong Kong speech that Sarah Palin said some things which should go a long way to allay such fears, according to Allen Caeden:

"Sarah Palin deliberately took numerous swipes at neo-conservatism in her Hong Kong speech. She gave the finger to George Bush’s 'compassionate conservatism' by using the term 'common-sense conservative' to describe herself, and she flat out rejected the golden egg of neo-conservatism which is to spread democracy around the world; she stated unequivocally that this is not the job of the United States. This was two fingers held up at once; one to George Bush and the other to the neo-conservatives in the Beltway."

Her exact words were:

"I am not talking about some U.S.-led 'democracy crusade.' We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that."

Sarah's publisher promises that in her forthcoming book Going Rogue, she will present "her vision for an America that is strong, independent, and free." Reagan conservatives and libertarians alike are waiting to see if that vision resonates in both camps. We're betting that it will.

- JP

Can Sarah Palin bring libertarians back into the fold?

We have preached incessantly here that conservatives of all stripes must unite and bring those libertarians who were part of the Reagan coalition back into the fold before we can win back the Grand Old Party from the big-spending moderates and neocons who have nearly ruined it. We have also made no secret that we believe Sarah Palin is the one Republican who can accomplish the two crucial tasks. With her speech Wednesday in Hong Kong, an increasing number of libertarians are beginning to take a second look at the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee.

From Phil Manger at Nolan Chart:

After decades of being forced to choose between voting for the lesser of two evils or wasting our votes on someone whose chance of winning was considerably less than that of the proverbial snowball in Hell, we libertarians — at long last — may have found in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin a Presidential candidate who is both acceptable and electable.

[...]

There are a number of compelling reasons why libertarians should seriously consider her as a candidate:

She resonates with Middle Americans. I have talked about this in the past.

Libertarian candidates have never done very well with the Republican "base", the so-called "values voters" who often decide who gets the GOP Presidential nomination and who are essential to the election of the Republican Presidential candidate. Palin does.

She is libertarian on the issues that matter most. She is for smaller government, less regulation and lower taxes. Furthermore, she was governor of a state that, in matters of taxation, comes closest to the Libertarian ideal. Alaska has no income or sales taxes, relying instead on taxes on land and resource extraction — in effect, a Georgist tax regime.

People pay attention to what she says. Last month, with just two words — "death panels" — on her Facebook page, Palin changed the terms of the debate on health care reform. She did this even though the establishment media, which apparently never bothered to read her original post (which was about rationing, not end-of-life counseling), misreported what she said. If the Federal takeover of health care is defeated, she will deserve a large share of the credit.

Palin is a true "Teflon candidate". No matter how much mud the media slings at her, none of it sticks. In fact, with each attack she just becomes stronger. I cannot recall a candidate in my lifetime — not even Ronald Reagan — of which this could be said.

Ron Paul is not available. His views have been more consistently libertarian than Palin's, but he will be 77 years old on January 20, 2013. Furthermore, although his knowledge of the issues is stronger, he lacks Palin's charisma and political instincts.

Manger does have some caveats. He's wary of her connection to the neocons, especially now that it's known that Randy Scheunemann is advising her, he's not sure of her views on civil liberties, and he's not convinced that she wants to be president. Still, he's willing to give her a chance:

Weighing all the relevant factors — including the inability of libertarians to agree on an effective political strategy (which should be evident to anyone who regularly reads Nolan Chart) — Sarah Palin is looking pretty good. She's certainly got the right idea about the economy. As for the rest, we'll just have to see.

- JP

Conservatism in search of a leader

Elvin Lin has published an excellent essay, "The Republican Party is Not the Conservative Movement" (read it here). While much has been written about the struggle between conservatives and moderates for the soul of the Republican Party, it is a battle conservatives have no hope of winning unless they renew old alliances. That means that Republican conservatives and Republican libertarians need to not only make peace with each other, but together they must forge a coalition with the Tea Party movement, a force which owes no allegiance to the GOP or any other political party. It is among these three groups -- conservatives, libertarians and the grassroots movement -- where the seeds of the Reagan Coalition have been scattered.

In his essay, Lin discusses how that winning coalition became unraveled:

The Reagan coalition is fraying, because the libertarian faction of the conservative movement has had enough of sitting at the back of the movement's bus. For too long, they bought Ronald Reagan's and George Bush's argument that expensive and deficit-increasing wars are a necessary evil to combat a greater evil, but the bailout of the big banks last Fall was the last straw for them. If Irving Kristol once said that neoconservatives are converted liberals (like Ronald Reagan himself) who had been "mugged by reality," Tea Partiers are conservatives who have woken up to the fact that neoconseratives are no different from pre-Vietnam-era liberals chasing after utopian dreams.

 While we agree with Lin that Iraq was both a botched and expensive adventure, we believe that the terrible price paid in blood and treasure to have a bastion of liberty in the Middle East and a base from which to ride herd on radical jihadists could have been worthwhile, had the neoconservatives only been willing to make the additional sacrifice of spending restraint on other fronts and committing the assets required to win the war sooner. Had there a sufficient   commitment to the effort from the beginning no surge would have been required, and the war could have been won sooner and with far fewer casualties. But George W. Bush and those who were advising him were more interested in playing at the margins. While Republicans in Congress were busy spending like Democrats, no adult was in the room to put a halt to it and school them on the error of their ways. As a result, neoconservatism is in decline, and its death as a force in American politics can't come too soon for libertarians and populists alike.

As Lin points out, the fall of neoconservatism has created a leadership vacuum in both the conservative movement and the GOP:

Most people will agree that we know exactly what Barack Obama is up to, politically. The right-wing talk-show hosts will be the first to tell us. But we really do not know what the Republican party stands for or who could possibly lead it in 2012. This is because the party has lost its synthesizing logic and lacks a unifying hero. This weekend, a straw poll conducted at the Values Voters Summit put Mike Huckabee on top, with 28 percent of the vote, because the straw pollers are Values Voters, who constitute yet another faction within the conservative movement. But what was more telling is that even though Sarah Palin did not even turn up for the event, she nevertheless garnered the same endorsement as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Mike Pence, at 12% each. This is conservatism in search of a leader.

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and so a golden opportunity presents itself:

Because it is parties that win elections and not movements, Republican members of congress should not be taking any comfort from the passionate protests of the Tea Partiers. Instead, they should be embarrassed about the fact that they have been trying to play catch up with a movement that has lost hope in its elected officials. More importantly, the Republican party must find a new way to unite the neoconservative, libertarian, and traditionalist factions of the movement to have any chance of standing up against a president and party, who in 2010, could well be riding the wave of an economic recovery to electoral success.

Viewed in this light, Sarah Palin's decision to give up her office and title as Governor of Alaska should begin to make sense even to the myopic critics who said at the time that doing so meant that her career in politics was over. Perhaps Citizen Palin's greatest assets are her political instincts. She saw the storm clouds gathering across the land and her political forecast was spot on. It is no coincidence that she chose the conclusion of her address in Hong Kong -- that part of a speech where the speaker wishes to hammer home the most salient point -- with these remarks:

My country is definitely at a crossroad. Polling in the U.S. shows a majority of Americans no longer believe that their children will have a better future than they have had...that is a 1st.

When members of America’s greatest generation – the World War II generation – lose their homes and their life savings because their retirement funds were wiped after the financial collapse, people feel a great anger. There is suddenly a growing sentiment to just “throw the bums out” of Washington, D.C. – and by bums they mean the Republicans and the Democrats. Americans are suffering from pay cuts and job losses, and they want to know why their elected leaders are not tightening their belts. It’s not lost on people that Congress voted to exempt themselves from the health care plan they are thrusting on the rest of the nation. There is a growing sense of frustration on Main Street. But even in the midst of crisis and despair, we see signs of hope.

In fact, it’s a sea change in America, I believe. Recently, there have been protests by ordinary Americans who marched on Washington to demand their government stop spending away their future. Large numbers of ordinary, middle-class Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from all over the country marching on Washington?! You know something’s up!

These are the same people who flocked to the town halls this summer to face their elected officials who were home on hiatus from that distant capital and were now confronted with the people they represent. Big town hall meetings – video clips circulating coverage – people watching, feeling not so alone anymore.

The town halls and the Tea Party movement are both part of a growing grassroots consciousness among ordinary Americans who’ve decided that if they want real change, they must take the lead and not wait to be led. Real change – and, you know, you don’t need a title to do it.

The “Tea Party Movement” is aptly named to remind people of the American Revolution – of colonial patriots who shook off the yoke of a distant government and declared their freedom from indifferent – elitist – rulers who limited their progress and showed them no respect. Today, Main Street Americans see Washington in similar terms.

When my country again achieves financial stability and economic growth – when we roar back to life as we shall do – it will be thanks in large part to the hard work and common sense of these ordinary Americans who are demanding that government spend less and tax less and allow the private sector to grow and prosper.

We’re not interested in government fixes; we’re interested in freedom! Freedom! Our vision is forward looking. People may be frustrated now, but we’re very hopeful too.

And, after all, why shouldn’t we be? We’re Americans. We’re always hopeful.

Thank you for letting me share some of that hope, and a view from Main Street with you. God Bless You.

To us, those sound like the words of someone who is ready, able and willing to fill the leadership void Elvin Lin described. 

Another View: Meanwhile, The Reaganite Republican questions whether the GOP really needs to have a leader at this stage of the game.

- JP

Attention all hands

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Lisa Graas has a good post up on the Glenn Beck controversy at Palin Twibe, and it has all the links and references. Lisa is correct. The flap over Beck's remarks is a distraction, one those who love liberty can ill afford at the precise time when we have the Obamunists outflanked.

Beck is more libertarian than conservative. We can't believe how riled up that simple fact has made some conservatives. It's not like we didn't already know that about the guy. Have they forgotten that libertarians and conservatives are natural allies when the enemy -- whether one chooses to call it socialist, corporatist, or whatever -- threatens our liberty?

As for Beck's remark that McCain would have been much worse for the country than Obama, we think we know where Beck is coming from. Under McCain, the republic would have continued its drift toward socialism that began after Reagan's second term ended. It would have been a much more incremental drift than Obama's "pedal to the metal" towing of our nation to the left, and therefore the opposition to it would not have mobilized as quickly or as fully as it has under Obama. At least that's what we think he meant by it, as we're not mind readers.

Here's what we are sure of - he likes Sarah Palin, and she likes him. Sarah told her Facebook friends to tune in to Beck's expose of Obama's Marxist czars, so she thought that his efforts in that regard were worthy and very important. The two share more than the common bond of having children with special needs. They both love the Constitution, and they see Obama and his Obamunists as clear and present dangers to the Constitution and the republic. We are having a difficult time getting upset with anyone whom Sarah Palin considers is doing good things for the country.

We know Mark Levin was very upset over Beck's remarks. Levin and Sarah Palin also have a relationship based on mutual admiration, much like the relationship between Beck and Sarah. So where does that leave us? We find ourselves in the position of some other libertarian-leaning conservatives who are pleading, "Can't we all just get along?"

Really. Some of us need to go back to enemy identification class. It's easy to tell who the enemies are among us. Listen to what they say and write for the recurring use of DNC talking points. The enemy among us sound just like Leftist Democrats, however not based one just one remark. They parrot the liberal line early and often. As Stacy McCain has already pointed out, Glenn Beck is not the enemy. He's done invaluable work for the cause of liberty by calling out these audacious Obama czars (actually, commissars is a more descriptive term) to millions on the Fox News Channel. Mark Levin has also done invaluable work for the same cause by virtue of his excellent book, Liberty and Tyranny (the audio version of which we're currently enjoying on all six CDs), his radio show and his all too-infrequent posts on NRO's The Corner blog, which together are reaching more millions of Americans.

What is it about conservatives that compels some of them to deploy into circular firing squads at the drop of a hat? We're really getting sick and tired of it. The enemy -- our true mutual enemy -- is not found in our own ranks of conservatives and libertarian conservatives. We're not including people who fancy themselves conservatives but actually voted for or promoted Obama for the presidency when the chips were down. Regardless of what he said to Katie Couric, Beck has never made excuses for Obama, as have the likes of Peggy Noonan. He has not blamed Christians for the problems of the Republican Party, as have the likes of Kathleen Parker. He has not attacked Sarah Palin, as have the likes of David Frum.

In our opinion, conservatives and libertarians would be well advised to forget this small stuff and focus on the real tasks at hand. Mark Levin has given us an excellent conservative manifesto which we can use to attract others to our cause. Glenn Beck has identified some prime targets of opportunity which show how far to the left and authoritarian the true enemy is. Sarah Palin has shown what can be done with no more tools than a laptop and a Facebook account plus some basic research and a lot of determination. Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe have demonstrated what two energized young folks with $1300 and a camcorder can accomplish, and Andrew Breitbart has shown us how to support and promote their efforts. All of these people are fighters, and our cause needs all of its fighters.

Aren't the Obamunists more deserving of our time, energy and resources than those who are our own natural allies? Let's get over this petty bickering and take the fight to the real enemies of liberty.

- JP

A libertarian perspective: Sarah Palin and the culture of liberty

We have this op-ed by libertarian Paul Benedict categorized under "Must Read":

Most of America, via the health care debate, has now been treated to a taste of the derision that Governor Palin has experienced on a daily basis. Though Americans will not soon forget they were fed such bitter fare by their elected leaders, the malicious slander sent their way is a badge of honor. Generation after generation of Americans have walked this same ground and have been scorned from far higher thrones than these.

[...]

Although the intellectual lights in the varsity ranks of the educated ignorant have, of late, taken a pass on criticizing Reagan publicly, they have treated him like the great Black thinkers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. They, in keeping with their love of darkness, have simply excluded his words from "intellectual life." This is hardly a surprising tactic since it would be unwise to bring up, even in derision, the brilliance of his words as heard at Normandy or as thundered from the base of the Berlin Wall. Perhaps Reagan was "blind" educationally, graduating from a small unknown college deep in the Mid West during the depression years and holding no more intellectual ambition than to read and dog ear page after page of the great conservative writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If so, he was a modern Tiresias (line 430), and like the prophet, as independent of the lords of elite intellectualism as that ancient seer was of Oedipus.

[...]

In late 18th century England, Edward Gibbon, penned his tome The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and blamed the end of Western Civilization on Christianity. During that same period, reading the same source material, Thomas Jefferson, in a rural obscurity so dense that England thought such men deserved little more than shackles, learned that the lack of checks and balances condemned liberty to Imperial destitution and eventual destruction. Without permission and without endorsement and without the approval of any elite English editorial panel, he authored the Declaration of Independence and the framework for the United States Constitution.

Sarah Palin's distinct accent and disinterest in the citadels of intellectual enlightenment are not disadvantages to the pursuit of American political liberty, they are, if history is to speak, prerequisites.

Benedict's writing is sheer political poetry. Only a minor detail prevents it from being the stuff of punditorial perfection. The author doesn't seem to have received word that Sarah Palin did not speak at the Ronald Reagan library.

That quibble aside, this most excellent and elegant essay from a Republican of libertarian philosophical bent reminds us that it is only Sarah Palin who can mend the breech in the GOP that sent many libertarian Republicans packing after the spending excesses and the total lack of interest in reducing the size of interest in limiting the growth in the size of the federal government that was part and parcel of the legacy of both Presidents Bush.

No other potential contender for the GOP's White House challenge save the party's 2008 vice presidential candidate evokes such positive response from the fiscal, libertarian, security and social conservative wings of the Republican household. If Sarah Palin can win back the long since departed independents and Reagan Democrats to the cause of the party of Lincoln, she will make history by becoming the first of her gender to hold the highest political office in the land if she wants it. 

- JP

Keys to the White House?

At The Provocateur, Mike Volpe has a post up in which he gives his keys for a Palin victory in 2012, should Alaska's governor launch a bid for the presidency:

"If Palin runs a disciplined campaign that focuses on her being an insurgent, an outsider, and a populist that's the best strategy to carry her to victory."

The blogger argues that Gov. Palin, by running as a conservative, would essentially be considered an insurgent in today's political environment. There's never been any question that she is an outsider. And few would argue with the classification of the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate's political philosophy by ontheissues.org as "populist-leaning conservative."



My only problem with that website's method of classifying politicians is that it's graph defines "populist" as the antithesis of "libertarian." Authoritarianism, not populism, is the opposite of libertarianism, IMO. At Libertarian Republican, Eric Dondero considers Sarah Palin to be one of the only three libertarian governors in the country. She was the top choice of the blog's readership for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, and the website honored Gov. Palin as Libertarian of the Year for 2008. Gov. Palin is as much a libertarian as she is a populist, and she's a conservative who preaches the gospel of Ronald Reagan.

And that's the point, isn't it? So many of the factions of the conservative movement want to call Sarah Palin one of their own. Many libertarian conservatives, paleoconservatives, social conservatives, federalists, fiscal conservatives and across-the-board Reagan conservatives all find much to admire in Sarah Palin. Which makes her the logical choice to reunite these conservatives components, heal the breech and get "movement" conservatism moving again.

- JP