Here's to Liberty!: Governor Palin's CPAC Prescription

While the GOP issued a 2012 GOP "autopsy report" yesterday, Governor Palin played political apothecary on Saturday in her barn burner of a speech on Saturday at CPAC. Her prescription for the GOP and the conservative movement was not one of consultants, pandering, navel gazing, and restraint of principles, but a prescription of the grassroots, outreach,optimism, and liberty. If the energy from the ballroom where she gave her speech could be harnessed, America would be energy independent in no time.

Governor Palin realizes that the circumspection for the GOP post-2012 should be pretty simple: the GOP lost, and President Obama won. Rather than dwelling on the defeat, she opted for a positive, "tundraroots" message of looking to focusing on the people, rather than the politicians and consultants. In doing so, she lreferenced an op-ed penned by fellow Lady Liberty, Margaret Thatcher, after her party lost in England in the mid 1970s which in part read:

Politicians should not be either professional efficiency experts or amateur industrial consultants. Their concern is with people, and they must look at every problem from the grassroots, not from the top looking down. International interest rates must be thought of in terms of the young couple's mortgage as well as of the balance of payments. 

Her speech was a rhetorical Expo Eraser to the dry erase board wielding architects of the Republican party. She called out the architects of political destruction like Karl Rove and called for re-building the country rather than attempting to re-brand a party. She called for liberty in the political process and encouraged more everyday Americans to run for office free from the constraints of focus groups, pollsters, and the like that are nothing more than political pyramid schemes.

As has been her bread and butter issue for her entire political career, she called out the cronyism of the permanent political class and called for embracing pro-free market principles. Again, she focused on liberty. The liberty that comes from opportunity of the invisible hand of the market, not the clenched fist of socialism or the hand-in-hand workings of crony ties between business and government.

One part of her speech that received the greatest crowd approval was Governor Palin's recognition of the College Republicans. In doing so, she called for young conservatives to not only drink Sam Adams, but to think Sam Adams. Adams, of course, was one of the Founding Fathers and signer of the Declaration of Independence. His words more than 230 years ago were akin to Governor Palin's speech when he said, “Nil desperandum, -- Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.” That's the patriotic optimism of Palin and Adams.

 

What received the largest response however, as shown in the clip above (H/T Ryan), was not what she said, but what she did. In our image driven, visual culture, a meme is worth a million words, such the Palin "Liberty Pose" that has gone viral over the last several days, so much so that my grandma even shared it on her Facebook page (with no prompting from me whatsoever). With a single swig, Governor Palin took a shot at the government overreach of the Bloombergs of the political world. One of her heroes, C.S.Lewis once said, "[o]f all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of the victim may be the most oppressive", and Palin's toast  brought that quote to life.

The media, who weeks before had written the Governor's own "autopsy report" after she chose not to renew her contract with Fox, were all in attendance to document her supposed irrelevance. Here is just one section of the media covering her "irrelevance" during her speech:

If that wasn't indication enough of her continued influence, here is the list of the topics trending on Twitter immediately following her speech:

It's not just about media coverage though--legacy media or social media--nor is about Governor Palin herself. It is about re-building a country, as she stated in her speech. Whatever her future plans may be, she certainly has called to arms those who toast to liberty along side of her and are willing to fight for liberty and American exceptionalism. It's what #sarahpalindoes.

Crossposted here and here.

MILF--Misogynists (and Elitists) I'd Like to Fulminate

As the 2012 elections draw near, the Elites and misogynists in the Republican party have doubled down on their direct and indirect attacks on both Governor Palin and grassroots conservatism. In a post at the National Review yesterday, Romesh Pennuru argues that a Romney/Palin match up in the Republican presidential primary would be bad for the party (emphasis mine):

So there is a non-trivial chance that the Republican nomination contest could come down to Palin vs. Romney, and that their conflict could define the primaries. And that’s very bad news for the Republican party. A campaign that pits the two against each other would divide the Republican party along each of its fault lines.

Funny. I thought presidential elections were about what is best for the country, not the Republican party. Silly me. However, he shows the true problem that the Establishment and Elites have with Governor Palin and other conservatives. In the eyes of the elitist Establishment, their greater problem is not with the Left or the Democrats in Washington; it is with people like Governor Palin who have the potential to rid them of their hold on the Republican party.

Pennuru later goes on to describe the class struggle within the party:

Class is another increasingly uncomfortable fault line in the party (as Reihan Salam and I recently described in these pages). Romney’s supporters tend to be college-educated, while Palin draws her support from people who didn’t get college diplomas. In recent elections, upper-middle-class voters have left the Republican party in part because they regard it as dominated by yahoos and know-nothings. But other voters, particularly in the party’s base, resent what they see as a tendency to overestimate the importance of degrees from prestigious colleges.

While recent polling data supports his assertion with regards to education, Pennuru exemplifies how out-of-touch many of the elites/Establishment are. The class issue is not an issue of education level; it's an issue of entitlement and character. The Establishment feels the "next in line", such as Mitt Romney, is deserving of the Republican nomination, but if that touted candidate couldn't win the previous primary election, what makes them automatically entitled to the next nomination? Such an attitude disrespects the American electorate's ability to choose a nominee for themselves. The character of the elites and Establishment are called into question when they so often choose to remain anonymous in their criticism of Governor Palin, like when unnamed Romney aides said she "isn't a serious human being" or multiple nameless GOP operatives trashed Governor Palin's supposed unelectability out of fear that her nomination may destroy their power structure in the GOP.

The most visible example of this is none other than Karl Rove, whose political dictionary seems to define gravitas as possession of a XY chromosome and a resume that includes time in a Bush administration. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Rove criticized Governor Palin's travelogue show, and those close to him stated that Rove was frustrated by the fact that the Tea Party was outside of his ability to control. To which Rove discusses:

He says Palin’s people responded to his criticisms by suggesting they’d found a new way to campaign.

“Some of her people have talked to me and said, ‘Look, the old rules don’t apply,’ ” says Rove. “In essence, the candidate is the message. We’ll see. That’s an interesting view, and we’ll see how accurate it is.”

By operating without filters in a flattened media environment, Palin and the tea party have argued that power is now bottom-up, divorced from the top-down organizing structures Rove has functioned within for more than 30 years.

The rules of the Establishment no longer apply. It isn't about the next in line or the preferences of the Elite. That is why Rove's preferred candidate and the man Pennuru touts as the compromise between Governor Palin and Governor Romney, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, will likely have little traction in a 2012 election. What Rove calls an " interesting view" is that the message and the messenger do indeed matter. That is why a man like Governor Daniels, who isn't known for his charisma ,who presided over President Bush's bloated budgets and would support a Value Added Tax, will not fly with an electorate looking for both the right message and the right messenger.

Perhaps an additional reason that Governor Palin does not win the respect of the Elite and Establishment is that you cannot be praised for your "perfectly creased pants" if you often wear a skirt, right David Brooks? The continued line of attack from the Establishment and Elite men in the GOP have come as a result of Governor Palin's genetic makeup. As Stacy wrote about yesterday, Daily Caller editor and Fox News contributor, Tucker Carlson, tweeted a sexist reference to Governor Palin as a MILF (mother I'd like to F**k). Sadly, it even took him two tweets to even get an apology right. The irony of this is that Carlson's site called out Chris Matthews earlier this week for his sexist and derogatory comments. Red State editor and CNN commentator, Erick Erickson joined in the misogyny when he tweeted the following last night:

Maybe my sense of humor needs to be recalibrated, but when I heard @TuckerCarlson's MILFistan comment, I laughed then got out my passport.

Yes, Erickson's sense of humor needs to be recalibrated. What is funny about denigrating any woman? What is politically constructive about objectifying the most powerful political voice in America?

Much like Governor Palin's redefinition of President Obama's Win the Future acronym, perhaps a redefinition of MILF is needed--Misogynists (and Elitists) I'd like to Fulminate. What do these lines of attack boil down to? It might very well be best described by one of Governor Palin's political role models, Margaret Thatcher, who once said, " I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding, because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have no political argument left".

Thatcher's words ring true. The Elites and misogynists do not attack Governor Palin on the issues; they attack her personally--her class and her gender. After all, what's there to criticize about the one potential candidate who could best provide the solutions on what appears to be a coming energy crisis? What's there to criticize about a woman who has been prescient on commodity inflation that has resulted because of quantitative easing? The elites and the misogynists cannot criticize Governor Palin on the issues because there's is little to criticize. Governor Palin has always been open to discussion of the issues, but when the elites and misogynists stoop to the level of chauvinistic pig, even with a tint of elitist lipstick, they are still chauvinistic pigs.

Crossposted here, here, and here.