Do not ever, not ever, tell me Sarah Palin is 'stoopid'!

My e-pal, Ortega, has much to answer for!  Yesterday he sent me a link to the New York Times (NYT) - yes, quite, need I say more?  Even worse, it was an article by one of their writers on the subject of a recent speech given by Sarah Palin.  Oh no, I thought, what have I done to upset Ortega?  Anyway, dutybound, I thought I would have to oblige by ploughing through the patronising smears and sneers I fully expected from the NYT but then I reached the third paragraph and read this:

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.

Like the British 'bobby' I once very nearly became, I thought, "'Ello, 'ello, wot's goin' on 'ere then?"  I went on and the writer, Anand Giridharadas, also went on, with this:

The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won’t-she question of her presidential ambitions.

So here is something I never thought I would write: a column about Sarah Palin’s ideas.

Crikey, I thought, a NYT writer taking her seriously!  And how right he was to do so:

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

Now that, in a nutshell, is the shrewdest summary of domestic American politics I have ever heard.  She supported each of her three assertions in turn:

In supporting her first point, about the permanent political class, she attacked both parties’ tendency to talk of spending cuts while spending more and more  [...]

Her second point, about money in politics, helped to explain the first. The permanent class stays in power because it positions itself between two deep troughs: the money spent by the government and the money spent by big companies to secure decisions from government that help them make more money. [...]

Ms. Palin’s third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

It is breath-taking stuff:

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

All that is the good news, the very, very good news; that at last there is a candidate who sees things as they are and tells it like it is.  The bad news is that I haven't the faintest idea how she will ever obtain the Republican nomination, let alone win the presidency.  Because the lady has form, in my opinion, excellent, pedigree form from the days when she nicked the governorship of Alaska from the 'good ol' Republican boys' network' of state political power and big oil business in which everyone had their snouts in the trough except the people of Alaska.  Once in power she broke it all up, telling Big Oil to get on about its business and the politicians to mind their own!

This, I think, is what Mrs. Palin has in mind for America, if and when she ever gains the White House:

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.

Perhaps the fact that Mr. Giridharadas appears to be a (brown) American Indian helps him see what most in the MSM have either failed to see or have wilfully ignored.  Of course, the 'will she/won't she?' question hangs over the entire speech.  Apparently the people, mostly from the Tea Party, present at her speech were begging her to commit to a run.  I can understand her hesitation.  The Republican party bigwigs know from their Alaskan colleagues that she is likely to be as abrasive to them and their cosy cabals as she will be to the big liberal institutions like the unions and the MSM so they will not welcome her with open arms.  Perhaps she is waiting in order to allow more and more of the Republican nominees to damage each other via their campaigns and debates before she steps up to the plate.  Or, perhaps she is thinking of running as an independent, outside the party system altogether, to which one can only respond with a quote, "C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre"!

Anyway, for America's sake I wish the lady well but just remember, 'stoopid' she ain't!

 

Comments

[Hank]

David

The NYT is a little slow.

That has been her message since before she got tapped for VP.

She cost the oil companies a bundle as governor. Yes “drill baby drill“ but do it right and no more Prudhoe Bay’s.

http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/
Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings

[dearieme]

The previous time that the US was run on rather fascistic lines, FDR's days, quite a bit of democracy survived. But impaired, mind. How many impairments can a Constitutional Republic survive? Put the other way, is reform possible, or has it all gone too far?

(One of my friends reckons it's all gone too far here: Britain is finished.)

[David Duff]

Thanks, Hank.

DM, hence the importance of people like Justice Thomas. SCOTUS is the place for real deep and long-lasting change and that is why it is so critical that an ideological Republican gets into the White House next year and ensures that as and when vacancies occur they are filled by the right people. Britain finished? Depends what you mean by 'finished'.