WhatFinger


GOP elephant--a Trojan elephant: I believe it is high time for the Tea Party to face the fact that their beloved Mama Grizzly has gradually metamorphosed into the elephant in the room

Sarah Palin: Rogue Goes Relative



Missing Michele Bachmann yet? I have previously chronicled the exerted and predictable effort of the Republican Party Establishment to smother the campaign of the most consistent and articulate constitutionalist in the party's nominating process. The kiss of death, as I explained at the time, was Sarah Palin's comment, the evening before the Iowa Caucus, that this was not Bachmann's "time." Palin's obvious personal interest in undermining Bachmann is a taboo subject among conservatives--as are all of her recent questionable choices and statements. Sadly, I believe it is high time for the Tea Party to face the fact that their beloved Mama Grizzly has gradually metamorphosed into the elephant in the room. And yes, that's the GOP elephant--a Trojan elephant, concealing the Republican Establishment inside.
In the fall, Palin indicated that she would not endorse a candidate until after Iowa. Of course, non-endorsement of one candidate does not preclude the damning of others. As the pollsters and Republican pundits produced the narrative they wanted--Romney as the preferred nominee, Gingrich as the acceptable "conservative alternative" (i.e. the non-conservative the Establishment thought it could get away with presenting as conservative, thus diluting the Tea Party vote)--Palin jumped/fell right into the trap, using her Fox News appearances to praise Gingrich's debate performances, thus giving at least provisional approval to the official Establishment conservative. As Gingrich faded in the weeks before Iowa, with Romney stuck at an anemic 25% support, the Establishment saw the urgent need to do something to salvage their agenda. Thus was born the last-minute Rick Santorum surge, which was very obviously an anti-Bachmann, anti-Perry push by an Establishment that felt it would be easy enough to stuff the uncharismatic, unmoneyed Santorum back into the bag after using him to divert support from the more dangerous conservatives. The plan worked to perfection, and the predictable post-Iowa dismissal of the disposable tool, Santorum, was in full swing the day after his dead heat with Romney. Suddenly there were stories everywhere condemning his record and questioning his conservative credentials.

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And so, after two weeks in which Santorum came within eight votes of winning Iowa, and then finished in a virtual tie for fourth place with Gingrich in New Hampshire, the media has somehow found its way back into the Establishment's alternative universe: Romney as the nearly inevitable nominee, with Gingrich, miraculously, once again ensconced as the only viable conservative option, and calling for the "other" conservatives--including the one who is beating him in the process so far--to get out of his way. Two Fox expert commentators have been prominent at the two key transitional moments--immediately before Iowa, and now, before South Carolina--Dick Morris and Sarah Palin. Morris, who, while arguing that Romney-Gingrich was the primary "we need to have," simultaneously helped to manufacture the Santorum surge before Iowa. Now, he is once again encouraging the fear that Gingrich must win South Carolina if there is any hope for a conservative challenge to Romney, while predictably ridiculing Santorum, who has served his purpose, and will henceforth be reduced to his pre-January status, which is to say invisibility. And Palin, who skewered Bachmann on the eve of Iowa, is back with a vengeance, this time encouraging a strategic vote for Gingrich--that is, against Santorum--allegedly in order to prolong the process. "If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I'd vote for Newt and I would want this to continue." Her declared reason for this proposal: "More debates, more vetting of candidates because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago was having a candidate that was not vetted to the degree that he should have been, so that we knew what his associations and his pals represented and what went into his thinking, the shaping of who our president is today." Is she suggesting that Romney, who has been prominent for years, who has been a governor, and who is making his second run for president, has not been sufficiently "vetted"? On the contrary, he has been quite thoroughly vetted. That is why he cannot gain broader support among conservative voters; they see what he is, and what he isn't, and they have refused him their approval.

In truth, Palin, seeking to maintain her reputation as the unassailable constitutional conservative among Tea Partiers

In truth, Palin, seeking to maintain her reputation as the unassailable constitutional conservative among Tea Partiers, is pursuing various means of pushing the Establishment's product without revealing that this is her real motive. She decided not to make an endorsement after Iowa, as she had said she would. Instead, her husband endorsed Gingrich, and did so by means of an explicit comparison of Newt's media struggles with his wife's. Thus, Sarah herself was able to steer clear of a direct statement that would certainly have alienated many Tea Partiers. Now, at last, she is pitching for Newt in her own voice, but only through the pathetic ruse of needing more time to vet the candidates. She is advocating the ultimate concession of one's franchise and one's political conscience--strategic voting--rather than endangering her unique status among conservatives by unequivocally supporting a man so many of them dislike. As is the common fate of those who seek to be all things to all men, however--even if only to all Tea Partiers--her cleverness will likely cost her more than an open statement of her position would have done. Consider how Palin arrived at her current, exalted position. When John McCain chose her as his running mate in 2008, conservatives were ecstatic. Finally, they had a reason for enthusiasm which the man at the top of the ticket could never inspire. Indeed, the selection of Palin at last gave the base a reason to feel a little warm and fuzzy about McCain himself. When Palin made her first primetime appearance, at the Republican convention, you could feel a mass exhalation--"thank the Lord"--even through the TV screen. This was particularly true when she delivered her most memorable line: "Both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they're always, quote, fighting for you. Let us face the matter squarely: there is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you." It was a line that could only have been delivered properly by a woman; it was perfectly pitched to make Palin the modern Republican voter's dream, a conservative woman who was not ashamed to be either of those things--the anti-Hillary. Then, of course, came the relentless assault from the Left, particularly its media and entertainment wings. As many conservative commentators noted at the time, the reason for the all-out attack was revealed by the ferocity of the attack itself: They feared her. So, as it turned out, did the Republican Establishment, which began its own media campaign--only slightly more subtle--against her: She was uninformed. She was coarse. She was shrill. In short, she was a commoner. Understandably, after the 2008 election loss, the burgeoning constitutionalist movement, which was dominated by concerned non-Ivy League citizens with a decided disdain for the Establishment--indeed, who were beginning to focus their energies on the need for Republican reform as a precursor to any fight with the Left--felt protective of Palin. She seemed to be one of their own, and she was clearly not of the Establishment. Thus, every slight against her was seen as an affront to the germinating Tea Party itself. Palin was Washington's voodoo doll for anti-Establishment conservatism: every needle poked into her was felt as a stab by everyone who regarded himself as a constitutionalist. Conservatives nobly rallied to her defense. Intent on not allowing Palin, or by extension themselves, to be swept under the rug by elitist thuggery, their support of the former governor became a transcendent mission unto itself. They loved her more for being so hated by the perceived--and truly perceived--enemies of freedom, on the left and right. Gradually, she became, in some people's eyes, the leader of the conservative revival; indeed, almost identical with it. "What would Sarah think?" and "As Sarah said..." have become common prefatory remarks among a certain segment of the Tea Party movement. One can see variations on these sentiments shot throughout the conservative community--in articles, blog posts, and readers' comments sections. Sarah Palin, for these Tea Partiers, has been transformed from voodoo doll into Delphic oracle: whatever she says must be true, or at least truly conservative, even if one must sacrifice one's critical faculty to the goal of justifying Sarah. This Palin-protective instinct, though speaking very well of the Tea Partiers' decency, has unfortunately created an unintended and undesirable effect: Palin has become untouchable. When she announced her decision not to seek the Republican nomination, many felt despondent, as though the Tea Party no longer had a candidate. In this regard (and only this regard), her stature with some supporters was, and is, comparable to that of Ron Paul; they could see no one but her. At that moment, Palin had a great hand to play. She could have used her considerable troop-rallying skills to fence-out the Establishment by helping an anti-Establishment conservative candidate, as Reagan did for Goldwater. She chose not to do so, instead playing neutral, while praising Gingrich's debate performances, and then, at the moment of truth, turning to her perceived Tea Party rival, Bachmann, to bury the hatchet--squarely in Michele's back. I have said that she has compromised her integrity by advocating a strategic vote. Actually, it's probably worse than that. She is really supporting Gingrich without qualification, but, unwilling to look her supporters in the eye and say that, she is camouflaging herself behind the rhetoric of strategic voting. She would rather appear as an advocate of cynical calculation than reveal herself as a Tea Party sell-out. Look again at her declared reason for wishing to prolong the primary process: "More debates." Gingrich supporters have been living for months in a dream world in which Gingrich is the King of the Debate; they hope for an interminable debate season because they see this as their man's most plausible path to victory. (Morris and his Fox hosts made this very point during the interview noted above.) By angling to get Gingrich on the scoreboard, while implicitly comparing Romney to Obama (the unvetted nasty-surprise-in-waiting), Palin is seemingly hoping to recreate the sense of necessity around Gingrich: "If not Newt, then who?" The only other plausible explanation for her current position is even more unflattering, namely that she is hoping to prolong the ugly divisiveness of the process, and to forestall the Romney coronation, in the vague hope that she might be called upon to come to the party's rescue at the convention. As that is the worst possible light in which to place her, I would prefer not to go there. It appears that what we are seeing here is exactly what constitutionalists fear most, an outcome they may already have seen in the case of so many of the "Tea Party Republicans" elected in 2010: Sarah Palin has given in to the lure of the Establishment. By dumping Bachmann, and now forsaking the shamefully Establishment-abused Santorum for, of all people, Newt Gingrich, Palin is playing the Establishment's hand for it. She is propping up the classic big government conservative, a man whose ever-shifting platform betrays a desire to receive personal credit for every good thing that might happen under his beneficent reign, at the expense of relative anti-Establishmentarians who would have benefitted from almost nothing more than from Palin's stamp of approval.

Gingrich is permanently scarred by his recent cynical embrace of the global warming agenda

Gingrich is permanently scarred by his recent cynical embrace of the global warming agenda. Now Palin has transferred a little of that damage to herself. Gingrich has attacked certain forms of "capitalism" on the implicit premise, as I have explained recently, that the free market is a government program to be managed like any other. Palin is smearing herself with this anti-American sentiment. She is on the same side, working the same beat, as Dick Morris. What constitutionalist could want to be there? Worst of all is the broader significance of her slow-motion endorsement of Gingrich, which goes far beyond the harm she is doing to her own credibility and long-term role in the Tea Party. She is making herself a key ingredient in the Establishment's self-protective stratagems, which--whether by accident or by design--are perfectly constituted to cook up the only recipe that might save the most failed presidency since Carter's from its proper fate. Palin's declaration that South Carolinians ought to vote for Gingrich was made on Hannity. The host hyperbolically solicited Palin's statement by saying, "We talked last time about Todd, your husband, going rogue. You haven't gone rogue, yet, you haven't given an endorsement." "Going rogue." This has been the essence of Palin's allure among Tea Partiers. She does what she wants, says what she thinks, Establishment be damned. Those days are gone. Perhaps they can never come back. If supporting Newt Gingrich--or, more likely, just opposing non-mainstream (i.e. constitutional) conservatism--is "going rogue," then roguery has gone relative. Sarah Palin is now a rebel against her own erstwhile cause, a popular spokeswoman for the Republican status quo. Or else she has just "gone rogue" in the strict, literal sense of the word; after all, a "rogue," properly speaking, is an unprincipled person. Sarah Palin has done a lot of good. She has given heart to so many who needed to believe the seemingly impossible might yet be possible. That message is still true. However, it seems the mission will have to be completed without Sarah herself.


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Daren Jonescu -- Bio and Archives

Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon National University in South Korea.


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