The Promise and the Peril of Sarah Palin

Yes, we need to be cognizant about turing Palin-mania into an Obama-like cult. But what we witnessed Wednesday night was spellbinding and historic. What Palin has is the "X" factor. She cut through political talk and gets to the heart of what makes America and conservatism great. Palin took on the attempt by the Left and MSM to destroy her. She did it by brushing aside the smears and talking directly to the people. The media isn't needed with her. Palin knows more about real life with its difficulties than every reporter and pundit inside the beltway combined. With genuine grace she withstood the assults becoming a cultural phenomenon. While sounding slightly hokey the more you read and learn about her the more you realize everything she said is real. She doesn't need to quote conservative classics from Burke or Hayek. Instinctually she's a conservative and can do nothing but exude it.

Palin's can be the leader of the party now if she wants it. I know of too many people who will work for McCain simply because of the Alaska governor. Plenty of people in St. Paul wished the ticket were flipped. The question is where does she want to take the nation. The end is a government more in tune with its voters, but how would she take us there? If she wants the responsiblity the conservative movement is willing to hand her she needs to express this. What's her vision? Like Reagan did she'll make some conservatives scratch their heads. She'll probably do a few things that will drive us crazy. However, if she is like Reagan she'll remain focused on the end result.

It seems to me that the greatest peril of the Palin nomination is its overall effect on how the McCain campaign will be viewed--especially by the indies and potential Dem defectors that McCain has to win over if he wants to win.

Both the vp choice (which many view as at least quirky) and the impression of knee-jerkish decision making make McCain look more like the risky choice.

That's a narrative the Dems have been trying to promulgate, but without much success to date (while Pubs have been rather effectively promulgating the obverse).

The Palin nomination brings that narrative very much to the fore. It remains to be seen whether the Dems will work that "risky" vein. They really haven't yet (post-Palin), at least explicitly. (Really: search the blogs--almost no "risky" talk about McCain. Nothing in the MM.)

Steve (fully acknowledged Obama supporter)
http://trueconservative.typepad.com

He made this call on June 6.

http://www.thenextright.com/the-mad-irish-man/mccain-picks-sarah-palin-for-vp

Beldar, an attorney blogger out of Houston, made the pick on June 8 http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2008/06/alaskas-gov-sar.html

She finished second in a poll held by Instapundit in June  http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/020625.php

If you were paying attention, she'd be on your radar screen

Maybe if the MSM read conservative blogs once in awhile they wouldn't be running around so often acting dumbfounded. 

Selling (or trying to sell, whatever) the Governor's plane on eBay sort of sums it up for her fiscal thoughts. You can argue about her trying to get more handouts from the State/Feds while she was Mayor/Governor, but that is part of the job. Not all bridges are 'Bridges to Nowhere'. 

I think we can be pretty certain of the general locale of her positions on conservation, energy, guns, marriage, and babies. The complaint is - perhaps she's too conservative. 

I don't know her thoughts on fixing Social Security. Or fixing immigration. Or health care. Though we do know that Special Needs kids are a personal issue. Which is actually fine with me.

The only foreign policy piece we know is - Drill Here, Drill Now. There was a little bit of isolationist to that part - "for American use." But if it makes us actually build lots more refineries, excellent.

But I can't piece together anything that has any potential to be worse than any of Obama's policies. Essentially every 'unknown' area for Sarah seems to link up with an area in which Barack is taking a very extreme view. Alaska is larger than Iran, but I doubt she'll call it a "tiny country."

Here's a nice selection of articles which makes you wonder what it is that makes Republicans so excited about Sarah Palin, the Jimmy Carter Republican.

* An accounting of the $27 million in federal earmarks Mayor Palin got during her tenure in Wasilla, a town of under 10,000.
* These earmarks, earned Wasilla a place on McCain's "pork list" of wasteful federal earmark spending at least 3 times while Palin was mayor.
* Palin hired Steven W. Silver, a former chief of staff to indicted Senator Ted Stevens, to procure these earmarks.
* From 2002 to 2004, Silver was a lobbyist for Greenberg Traurig, the lobbying firm of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
* John McCain bragged in his acceptance speech Thursday about the work he did investigating Greenberg Traurig during this same period Silver worked for them, for stealing money from Indian tribes, an investigation which led to Abramoff's conviction.
* Stevens name is mentioned in emails released by McCain's investigation.

On second thought maybe she's not some new sort of Jimmy Carter Republican, just the same old Jack Abramoff Republican.

Let's also not forget to wonder how the enthusiastic crowd which cheered her speech overlooks her ties to a radical Alaskan seperatist movement - the Alaskan Independence Party - which her husband was a member of for almost 10 years. In each of the last two election cycles, she's even addressed the parties convention telling them to "keep up the good work".

After 8 years of Big Government with Big Tax Cuts I shouldn't be surprised by the cognitive dissonence required to be a Republican these days, but this VP pick would seem to reach new heights, the kind of heights that house the many glaciers in Alaska that Joe Vogler, the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party must have been referring to when he said:

"The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government"

God Bless America!