Legal Commentary

Palin is popular — not because she's a "populist," but because she works for the whole population "with a servant's heart"

By Beldar

Christopher Orr has a very interesting post at The New Republic about Gov. Palin entitled The Case Against the Case Against Sarah Palin. No, it's not savaging the MSM or Hard Left sources who've been vomiting out smears so fast it's hard to keep track of them ? I, for one, have been playing Whack-a-mole since the announcement on Friday, and they finally seem to be slowing down some. Rather, Orr quotes at length from an unnamed Alaskan friend, who describes the fates suffered by those Alaskans who made the mistake of failing to take Gov. Palin seriously at various steps during her political career.

The collective term to describe them now is "Roadkill," and what they all have in common, be they Republicans or Democrats, is the look of sharp surprise on their (political) corpses' faces (which replaced looks of smug confidence). In a sentence, his theme is: "Trivialize her at your own peril."

His last two paragraphs particularly interest me:

Sarah Palin is a living reminder that the ultimate source of political power in this country is not the Kennedy School or the Davos Summit or an Ariana Huffington salon; even now, power emanates from the electorate itself. More precisely, power in 2008 emanates from the working class electorates of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Sooner or later, the Obama camp will realize that the beauty pageant queen is an enormously talented populist in a year that is ripe for populism. For their own sake, it had better be sooner.

I think the first of the paragraphs I've just quoted is dead-bang on the money, and I emphatically agree that Sarah Palin's political career so far is a compelling, eloquent proof of that. It is exactly that which thrills me about her nomination, and exactly that which makes her a game-changer in this race.

What I disagree with, though, is Orr's friend's choice of the term "populist" in his final paragraph. Sarah Palin's not a "populist," but a public servant in the most classic sense of that term, and it is precisely that which has made her "popular."

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on September 03, 2008 (boomark / email).