— even as establishment Republicans and the bulk of “conservative” pundits / GOP “strategists” work diligently either to dismiss her out of hand as “unserious,” or else marginalize her as an unelectable extremist whose policy ideas won’t appeal to the real thinky center of the electorate.
As Dan Garber notes to me in an email, “I’m not sure, but this may be a sign of the apocalypse.”
I guess it’s only a matter of time now before we start reading reports about zombie Ann Coulter and zombie Laura Ingraham munching on Iditarod dogs and waiting for Momma Grizzly to trek to the outhouse so they can wrestle her to the tundra and eat her brains.
From the Times’ Anand Giridharadas:
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.
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.
There was plenty of the usual Palin schtick — words that make clear that she is not speaking to everyone but to a particular strain of American: “The working men and women of this country, you got up off your couch, you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind, you got off the John Deere, and we took to the streets, and we took to the town halls, and we ended up at the ballot box.”
But when her throat was cleared at last, Ms. Palin had something considerably more substantive to say.
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).
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; to stoke public anxiety about a credit downgrade, but take a vacation anyway; to arrive in Washington of modest means and then somehow ride the gravy train to fabulous wealth. She observed that 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States happen to be suburbs of the nation’s capital.
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.
“Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done?” she said, referring to politicians. “It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.”
Because her party has agitated for the wholesale deregulation of money in politics and the unshackling of lobbyists, these will be heard in some quarters as sacrilegious words.
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.
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?
Why, glad you asked, Anand! The “breakthrough” — as 2010 should have alerted you — is not really hiding at all. It’s called the Tea Party, and it is a grass roots movement that appeals to ideas, rather than parties, and its goal is to take back America from the entrenched political class.
Had you not been so quick to believe your own narratives of what the TEA Party is, and who it counts among its numbers, you might have seen this — just as you might better understand the real appeal of people like Sarah Palin (who, as you yourself point out, really should appeal to many who call themselves liberal, were they truly liberal and not merely thuggish, would-be authoritarians hiding behind the label of “progressive”)
I’ve been making the argument for quite some time now that we aren’t witnessing a battle between Democrats and Republicans, or even “liberals” vs. “conservatives” — though those are part of the current political dynamic, certainly.
Still, first and foremost, what we are witnessing is an awakening of a good solid portion of the American electorate to the fact that an entrenched, permanent, professional political class — together with the administrative state it has built to insulate it — has ceased governing by the consent of the governed.
This is the people vs. the ruling class.
A lot of folks are recognizing, many for the first time, that an enormous and unwieldy government that is always looking to expand, and always justifying that expansion by granting itself ever more control over us, is anathema to their liberty — and that our country is slowly turning into a working model of liberal fascism. They recognize that the language of government is a language of lies and deceits — where “cuts” are really slowing the rate of additional deficit spending; “tax expenditures” represent unfunded spending plans that morph into reasons to justify stealing more wealth from private citizens; and “investments” are really money laundering schemes whereby private wealth is filtered through the government back into the hands of cronies and clients, who in turn agree to keep the votes and donations flowing to their benefactors.
When they speak of “taking back the country,” they aren’t speaking of a return to Jim Crow, or a recall of the franchise for women. They are talking about a country in which the federal government’s role is limited; in which the states and localities have more say in the governance of those closest to home; and in which competition and free markets “regulate” the society — and in so doing, represent a “fairness” that, because the market and competition have no specific partisan constituencies, is far superior than the Orwellian “fairness” given us by the Nanny State, progressivism, and “compassionate conservatism.” Redistribution of wealth, with the government’s thumb always on the scale, envisions government as a disinterested moral enterprise, a cadre of high-minded angels charged with determining social outcomes. Where what is truly “fair” and “moral” is a government that protects our unalienable rights, and gives us predictable and knowable laws under which we each must operate.
These are first principles, and these are what the TEA Party and constitutionalists / classical liberals are fighting to resurrect — to “restore” America, as Palin puts it, not to fundamentally transform it.
The entrenched political class — in both major parties — are content with the rough outlines of the current status quo.
Sarah Palin and millions like her are not.
It’s about time you got the message. Because it’s not like we’ve been hiding it.
(thanks also to GeoffB and DarthLevin)
Pikachu dog whistle alert…
Great post, Jeff! You’ve been on a roll lately!
populism is gayer than putin in a prom dress
Anand is an idiot if she is just now figuring that this is what the tea party and by extension, Sarah Palin, are all about. But then again she writes for the NY Times. The funny thing is she not so subtly spoke of Palin speaking superficially and not of policy. This, ostensibly, is coming from somebody who voted for the shallowest of shallow souls in Barak Obama.
happyfeet is GOP Proud!
Hah. Says the guy who is “perception is reality” personified, or internetified as it were.
Dick Durbin. He’s a fairie.
I’ll confess I had the same reaction as Dan Garber when I first read the linked piece. I worried a bit that the NYT crowd might start having aneurysms, until I realized that this is an IHT piece, and therefore probably won’t be widely read among those who live under the illusion that civilization ends at the Hudson.
Still, it’s a hell of a challenge to the nuance crowd to see past the cartoons in their heads.
(Anand is a guy, btw.)
Excepting of course where he shows he can’t.
Even if I sometimes write that I “LOL’ed”, I rarely actual Laugh Out Loud. This time, an audible “Horrrt!” excaped. Kinda like a hearty gut-shot laugh, I guess.
Yes, we are glad you asked.
Baby steps, sdferr. Can’t spring it on them all at once. Wouldn’t be cricket.
Taking the son of a bitches out for instruction in bullwhipping wouldn’t be cricket either, so’s we’d have to teach them to throw a googly instead.
Actually, I was talking about a recall of the franchise for women.
Damned if that doesn’t just make two of us, bro!
Slightly o/t, but if one group of union thugs, beats the shit out of a different group of union thugs, who are the racists?
I’m not sure union thugs can be racist, because they are on the side of social justice. Supposedly.
However, I think the answer to the question is, “Look, bunnies!”
@ 14 That would be US, the non union folks who forced them to fight amongst themselves, because all we do is spread disharmony and despair in our wake.
or so i have been told.
The two paragraphs following this truism are truly epic.
I wanna practice reading them aloud, so that shit just rolls off my tongue.
“if one group of union thugs, beats the shit out of a different group of union thugs, who are the racists?”
Any reporter that dares report it?
That they need to be said — as the pushback they are, as opposed to the former assumption of days past that they were normal and just and their opposite was unjust and unreasonable — is as remarkable as the blinding wilderness of reason into which they are projected.
Time was things where what they were.
Speaking collectively, we are people of the lie. The academy and press have pulled one hell of a job on this nation, and as with evil, their greatest victory is convincing us that they do not exist as such.
“if one group of union thugs, beats the shit out of a different group of union thugs, who are the racists?”
Link
Principles, not pragmatism.
I will not vote for any more statists. It would be better to change the climate so statists couldn’t function without being punished, but too many people are on the dole right now to make that happen.
I would have preferred the last four words there were “enhanced by individual liberty”, but I can see where Anand may have choked on that much post-partisanship.
AFTRA vs ILWU, round 1.
Actually apparently our mission is to destroy Obama completely. The Onion says so.
Were that it were so; I have just that much spite in my body.
JHoward, I agree with your points, that the system of economics we are practicing is flawed, damned by the details in much the same way communism is. My question is, would it work if there was a balanced budget amendment in the constitution with a serious stipulation for sane deficits?
I guess I’m asking if you’re of the opinion that the goals of the TEA Party, of which Ron Paul is not a prominent part, can correct the mess we’re in.
You know, without going to the gold standard.
Democrats protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big money
Oh for pity’s sake .. the only way Big Money can threaten individual liberty is if it is backed up by Big Government.
Can any business force someone to give up their property, buy their product, indeed, give any business the time of day unless Government backs ’em up with legal sanctions including jail?
GM can’t make me buy their product or invest in their company … unless Big Gov takes my tax money and gives it to them.
Palin says three things they are interlocking but the important thing is there are two capitalisms the first kind of capitalism is the good kind and the second kind of capitalism is the bad kind we should have more of the good kind
I’d kinda like to see a throw down between geoffb’s lout at #24 and the UFC Champion Electric Boogaloo Pikachu. I imagine alot of “why I oughta…hold me back,… grrrr!”
I’m sure RedState, Ace et al will be all over this…
I’ve rather enjoyed Mr Romney stabbing himself with Gov. Perry’s Ponzi scheme sally. Way to go Mitt, you’ve stepped right in a hole full of punji stakes. Oh, and adios, putz.
But… but… robber barons!!!!!!!111!!!1!one!!
My opinion is
1. Natural systems are sublime and simple.
2. Artificial systems comprise various combinations of complexity, instability, dishonesty, and egotism, and are doomed by their own exponentially rising costs, whether monetary, fiscal, social, cultural, or spiritual.
3. The latter are an enormous barbed hook in our mouths and cannot be removed without force, damage, and pain.
We are seriously screwed. We are looking in the face the end of an empire of sorts. The rest of the functioning globe, which depending on which portion of it you view, has little or none of our baggage in all of these areas of interest, can rocket past us because of that even in cases of outright state communism, or remain equal to us in cases of decades of soft statist collectivism. We’re more bankrupt than anyone, our system is exploding, and we insist on calling ourselves free and prosperous.
If we balance the books it will be against the will of an establishment cabal of power and money — JG’s ruling class. They’ve put us in hock hundreds of trillions of dollars on the basis of a temporary system, one that will end sooner than later. Whether a balanced budget amendment brings their demise — a balanced budget infers no significant growth in the money supply and that will defeat them and this system but will take us all down together — is clear but a balanced budget by itself will not stabilize the system. This system cannot be stabilized which is why its managers must inflate it to its bitter end. The system must and will end.
A balanced budget amendment is tantamount to the end of the present currency system and with it, the literal end of the ruling class as we know it today. That may not be the desired effect, but it will be the outcome. Cascading defaults across the whole of American finance, business, culture and society are coming. How the pieces are picked up is what counts.
The goals of the Tea Party are not to my knowledge these, but the goals of the Tea Party will certainly initiate them, provided those goals remain in mind and in force. I don’t advocate for a gold standard because identifying the problem is not tied to an inherent solution to the problem. I don’t know what the solution is when the hook is set so very deep.
“I don’t know what the solution is when the hook is set so very deep.”
the solution is simple but not easy. all the fed gov’t agencies prior to 1900 must go.all of them.
“prior to” = after
I blame Bush. Or lack thereof
The evidence is scant and denials have been made.
There’s a Brit documentary filmmaker, Nick Broomfield, who has a Palin hit piece coming out, to coincide (and compete with ) The Undefeated.
Damn you, Stephanie. The wife was right beside me when I clicked that link, and my acting abilities were insufficient.
Sorry for that.
ask algore about this
Link
Difficult to say that Anand Giridharadas is among them though, what with the conflating of Big Business with free markets and the suggestion that deregulating campaign finance is inimicable to ending the lobbyist/PAC/527 money laundering machine.
Gotta love the “Conservatives in the mist” tone. Why that Sarah Palin is almost human!
Ronald Reagan
Labor Day Address at Liberty State Park
delivered 1 September 1980, Jersey City, New Jersey
“… this is an IHT piece, and therefore probably won’t be widely read among those who live under the illusion that civilization ends at the Hudson”
Good point, Squid. On the other hand, it’s a marvelous thing to send to the lefties in one’s circle–how can they not read it, since it has the NYT brand?
The person I sent it to yesterday, who has been defending Marxism in our discussions with all manner of ridiculous arguments (floating abstractions worthy of a parrot) had this reaction: “I didn’t know these ideas were out there!”
This lefty thought he was well-informed. He thinks of himself as an erudite intellectual. Baffled with bullshit is more like it, but if you live in the world of the Left, where the truth is assumed not to exist and fealty to the tribe is second nature, well, they’ve been down so long it looks like up to them is one way to put it.
While it’s infuriating to try to talk to these people while they remain in their insular bubbles of contempt, it’s encouraging that an excellent argument made in good faith in clear English can sometimes break through the fog. Humans can sense the truth if they allow themselves to consider it. It’s only natural.
Sarah Palin has known this for a long time, and she lives by this principle. That’s one of the many reasons I admire her.
I’m starting to think she will run.
I’m also praying for her safety.
I find it almost amusing when the government sticks business’ head six feet up the governments anus, and then wails that “Capitalism doesn’t work!”
Free market capitalism takes care of it’s own. If you are greedy or stupid, you FAIL!
But, with the government sticking their fingers so far up capitalism’s a-hole, there is barely a shred of “free market” left.
Sometimes I wish I was 21 again, so I could believe in ObaMao’s Marxist bullshit. It would be much easier, ya know?
And I wouldn’t even have a clue, because I would be SO compassionate for the crackheads, welfare moms, and cop killers.
And fuck those people who believe in the “antiquated America”, where rich people are the villans.