Broder On Palin: ‘This Might Work’

Uh-oh.

The dean of Beltway journalists, David Broder of the Washington Compost, has his latest column up. It’s on Sarah Palin, and it’s worth reading.

Broder, who’s forgotten more than most of the two-bit hacks that call themselves Washington journalists know, sees the former Alaska governor as a highly credible force in both the conservative movement and Republican politics.

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.

Her invocation of “conservative principles and common-sense solutions” was perfectly conventional. What stood out in the eyes of TV-watching pols of both parties was the skill with which she drew a self-portrait that fit not just the wishes of the immediate audience but the mood of a significant slice of the broader electorate.

Freed of the responsibilities she carried as governor of Alaska, devoid of any official title but armed with regular gigs on Fox News Channel and more speaking invitations than she can fulfill, Palin is perhaps the most visible Republican in the land.

More important, she has locked herself firmly in the populist embrace that every skillful outsider candidate from George Wallace to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton has utilized when running against “the political establishment.”

It doesn’t always win. There are more John Edwardses and Mike Huckabees than I can count. But it wins more often than you’d guess and for a greater variety of people, especially when things are not going well for the country.

When Sarah Palin speaks, images of Ronald Reagan come to mind in many people. She has a way of putting things into words that ordinary Americans can understand and relate to. Reagan connected with the America that is too often dismissed and looked down upon by the elites in the media and the Boston-Washington corridor. And yes, that includes some Beltway conservatives who’ve gone native by not being around real people.

However, I was at a local TEA Party gathering last night and the topic of the 2012 GOP presidential race came up. As much as I like Sarah Palin and would work for her in a nanosecond, I just cannot see her as presidential timber any more.

That does not mean she cannot be a playmaker in the GOP as well as advance conservatism, and perhaps she sees herself in that type of role rather than as the 45th POTUS.

But Sarah Palin has been Quayle-ized, and rather unfairly, I might add. To be Quayle-ized means to have your name become the punch line of jokes. Like Dan Quayle. O.J. Simpson. Eliot Spitzer. John Edwards. Tiger Woods. Keith Olbermann.

And unfortunately, that was what happened to Palin, courtesy of the Old Guard GOP, the blueblood countryclubber crowd who resented her presence on the 2008 ticket, still not realizing that she was the only reason the race was competitive. You had Mitt Romney backers in the McCain camp that allowed her to be made into a punching bag, never defending a potential 2012 rival and making the GOP insiders as misogynic as the Left.

Can Palin recover? Only time will tell, since she’s only 45 years old. Remember: the current occupant of the Oval Orifice has less experience that Sarah Palin does at life, let alone actually governing and accomplishing anything.

But the stakes are far too high in 2012 for the Republicans to nominate anyone who isn’t a lock to oust Our Lord and Savior from power. And thus far, the only potential Republican candidate that Barack Hussein Obama polls ahead of is … Sarah Palin. Which tells me that, even though it’s an inaccurate portrait of her, the bloc of disavowed voters who abandoned the GOP in 2006 and 2008 have bought the Saturday Night Live and state-run media portrayal of her. And if that is the case, they may very well stay with the devil they know.

Over at Pajamas Media, Melissa Clouthier’s column on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement segues with my topic. While I disagree to a certain extent with the contention that Palin’s journey to Nashville was a mistake — the big mistake was Palin’s conscientious decision to skip CPAC — I agree that not only is she not the leader of the Tea Party movement, she couldn’t be the leader even if she wanted to be.

The Tea Party movement has no leader, and arguably it doesn’t need one. There is no Tea Party per se. It is not a political party, no matter how much the state-run media wants to turn it into one. It’s a movement defined by opposition to big government, high taxes, runaway spending and deficits and mounting debt. It consists of Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It cuts across racial, ethnic, income, age and gender lines. It’s the ordinary American vs. the political and cultural elites.

This is insightful:

Sarah Palin garners fanatical support from many of her followers. She has Obama-esque star power. The camera loves her. The media loves to hate her. She always makes headlines.

Her followers do not take too kindly to any criticism of Sarah Palin, thank you very much. In my own case, I’ve followed her career with interest — writing mostly in defense of her. The vicious coverage she’s received makes it nearly impossible to judge her on her merits. The media caricatured her from the beginning as an empty-headed Alaskan redneck. She deserved fair and honest treatment, but the left rightly feared (and loathed) her star power. Thus, they attacked her at every turn.

These attacks made Sarah Palin the de facto symbol of media bias, and she became adored and revered on the right by those who have seen their own beliefs — clinging to God and guns — maligned. But not every tea partier engages in idol worship. In fact, that’s kinda the point. Most don’t — even for Sarah Palin.

I understand the kneejerk reaction of Palinistas is to defend her at every turn, even in the face of missteps. That’s a result of the unfair treatment she’s received from both the political and cultural elites as well as the state-run media. If those entities had treated her even-handedly, it would be different.

But to do so runs the risk of evolving into the Kool-Aid drinking, lobotomized Obamabots. Or even the Bush-bots. I recall vividly being attacked personally by Bush supporters as being the same as the moonbat Left because I refused to support Harriet Miers, the pork-laden spending bills he signed, etc., or any mistakes made in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

This is America. We cannot blindly follow our leaders off a cliff, no matter who they are. They’re human. They are not infallible, Palin included. She’s made mistakes. One clearly was the notes-on-the-hand incident. She had to have known how that was going to be played out. Not to have foreseen that is politically unforgivable. Despite the fact that we have a POTUS who has to take his trusty teleprompter to talk to sixth graders and to conduct a staff meeting with his Vice President and Treasury Secretary. It undercuts her ability to poke fun at the Teleprompter-in-Chief and provides more fodder for the late night comics who’ve helped define her in the public eye.

The other is not engaging in media interviews outside of Fox News, friendly ground because she’s an FNC contributor. To overcome the misperception that she’s not qualified to be president, she needs to take the battle to the enemy. A one on one with, say, ABC’s Jake Tapper would be a good start. Tapper has struck us as fair even to those with whom he may disagree politically. Too bad that Tim Russert is no longer with us. A sit-down with him on Meet the Depressed would have been very good for her.

Tapper, by the way, tweets this ABC News poll which gives bad news for Palin: 55 percent disapproval, 71 percent say she’s unqualified to be POTUS. Numbers can lie to some extent and even be fudged, but there are times that perception is indeed reality.

This may be one of them.

Bottom line is: there are almost two years until the Hawkeye Cauci and the New Hampshire primaries. That’s more than an eternity in politics. We cannot worry about 2012. We have the 2010 midterms coming up and we cannot take our eye of the ball when it comes to November of this year. Let 2012 worry about itself for now.

There are a lot of solid GOP candidates on the horizon for 2012 and probably a few that haven’t even considered a run yet.

Let’s take back Congress and neutralize the Boy King for the last two years of his only term. Gridlock can be a good thing when it stops damage to the country as a whole.

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