In her icy lair she waits while perplexed scribblers try to convince themselves that beside a distant northern lake there is no shadow roaming free beyond the parameters of their prescribed calculus and ingrained ritualistic incantations.
But it is only pretence because in reality they are ever glancing over their shoulders for although they publicly voice disdain they are privately nervous of someone who refuses to engage within the rules of their vaunted choreography
That is why in several of the pieces that emerged in the aftershock of Huckabee’s withdrawal the name of Sarah Palin was either left out or allowed but a cursory nod. Of course they might merely have been falling in line behind the grand panjandrum of prognostication George Will who returned from his visit to the Delphic Oracle and proclaimed that in 2012 the GOP nominee lacing up armour to enter the lists against Obama would either be Daniels or Pawlenty.
Time was, of course, when George’s diktat would have been enough to seal the deal. Pundits and their media masters controlled the slip road to the information highway and the most that any ordinary Jane or Joe could do was to splutter over their morning cornflakes and shout abuse at the cat in order to let off steam.
But now the GWs of the world are left preaching to an empty chapel as the world and his wife are surfing along the information highway themselves.
Poor George – how frustrating it must be to have your once booming voice reduced to a constricted squeak.
With all the other candidates and pseudo candidates there is blather about exploratory committees, raising money, hiring consultants and strategists, testing the waters in Iowa, fluttering their eyelids at an assortment of governors, politicians and celebrities and, above all, dancing to the musical pipes of the self proclaimed kings and queens of the media.
The result? Allahpundit goes orgasmic.
But, if she chooses to enter the GOP race, it is possible that Sarah Palin could decide to dance to her own tune.
Exploratory committee? A prayer, chat with Todd and the family and a couple of spiders who live in the Palin garage = job done!
Raising money? As one Hot Air comment pitched it
If Palin enters the fray, everything changes. Romney might be able to generate truckloads of money, but Palin can make it rain from the sky on demand.
Consultants/strategists? Here’s Matthew Continetti
Palin’s entry would completely scramble the presidential campaign. She’s quite simply the most famous Republican woman in the world, with shrewd instincts, charisma, passionate supporters, and no fear
Why would someone like that need a consultant? Why would anybody with an ounce of savvy need a consultant?
A consultant is a person who borrows your watch and then charges you to tell you what time it is
Iowa? Once every four years thousands of “consultants/strategists” parachute into Iowa alongside legions of media hacks and their support staff. For several weeks this international assortment of scribblers and voiceovers pretends to take an interest in ethanol subsidies and the Waterloo Black Hawks. Once the caucuses are over they all rush back to their big city apartments and forget about Iowa until the year of the next Olympics – including the candidates who have been pimping themselves to Iowans for several months.
But in Iowa, just as there is in every state, below the first and second tier of GOP apparatchiks who love to sound off to any out of state hack with a mike or a blackberry, there are probably more than a thousand lower level enthusiasts who will gladly crawl barelegged over fifty miles of broken glass to work for Palin.
As for endorsements, she is probably the only political figure in America who walks alone. If they come, then fine. But after the heavy lifting she did for so many candidates in 2010 the lack of reciprocity after the Gifford shooting was quite an eye opener. But then the mathematics of the GOP political equation became clearer. The Republican Party needs Sarah Palin. But perhaps she does not need the Republican Party.
Indeed, if she decides to stand she gave Sean Hannity a clue of how she might position herself towards the end of their recent interview. (10.00-10.55 in the clip)
When he asked her about her views on the current speculation of who might be throwing their hat into the ring she became rather dismissive of such antics so early on in the game. She used the phrase “both sides of the aisle”, talked of “fighting for Family, Faith and Freedom” and, the money quote, declared she was not a real fan of politicians.
This is trademark Palin. Though she wears the Republican label she really puts herself forward as being above party politics. This is how she won and governed in Alaska – and why she continued to be so unpopular with the official GOP establishment up there.
This is why the national GOP elite and their battalions of consultants, lobbyists and media drones loathe her as much as the liberal/left. Positioning oneself above the party disengages power from the cogwheel of the spoils system – the jobs for the boys, the waivers, the sweet government contracts, the backroom deals. The party structure feeds on this and for many it is the raison d’être for the whole mechanism of politics. She briefly broke that culture in Alaska and would do the same in Washington.
Quite a while ago, soon after the dust of 2008 had settled I wrote a comparison between Sarah Palin and the French leader Charles de Gaulle and I still stand by that.
As an Englishman I was always naturally suspicious of anything that de Gaulle did because I knew that he would never fail to place the interests of France above everything else. But I also admired him for it and yearned for the day when we might have such a leader (to my astonishment, in 1979 when the UK had sunk to its lowest depths, she came.)
De Gaulle was one of the most brilliant political operators in any modern democracy. But he achieved success by offering himself to the French people as an anti-politician, concerned only for the future of France.
De Gaulle was relatively unknown to the French people in 1940 but millions of them heard his broadcast from London at the moment of their deepest despair and in those few minutes he became the inspiration and hope for so many. Governor Palin walked onto the stage at the Republican Convention, electrified millions and stole their hearts forever with her grace, her honesty and her love of life sealing there and then a contract and covenant of support through fire and flood whatever may happen
I wrote that in March 2009 at a time when on both sides of the pond “those who know best” had her already shredded and dumped into the dustbin of history. But I had a sense that there were a lot of ordinary Americans who had sealed that contract and covenant – and I was right.
So now my American friends wait and wonder. The runes have been thrown but have yet to be read.
Who knows what the future holds….
