She Broke the G.O.P. and Now She Owns It
SARAH PALIN and Al Sharpton don’t ordinarily have much in common, but they achieved a rare harmonic convergence at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. When Sharpton told the singer’s children it was their daddy’s adversaries, not their daddy, who were “strange,” he was channeling the pugnacious argument the Alaska governor had made the week before. There was nothing strange about her decision to quit in midterm, Palin told America. What’s strange — or “insane,” in her lingo — are the critics who dare question her erratic behavior on the national stage.
Sharpton’s bashing of Jackson’s naysayers received the biggest ovation of the entire show. Palin’s combative resignation soliloquy, though much mocked by prognosticators of all political persuasions, has an equally vociferous and more powerful constituency. In the aftermath of her decision to drop out and cash in, Palin’s standing in the G.O.P. actually rose in the USA Today/Gallup poll. No less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president. That overwhelming majority isn’t just the “base” of the Republican Party that liberals and conservatives alike tend to ghettoize as a rump backwater minority. It is the party, or pretty much what remains of it in the Barack Obama era.
That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
The only thing i like about Palin is that she's good fodder for Tina Fey. But this Op-Ed is typical of why I rarely find Op-Eds worth reading--vague criticisms and ranting and ravings instead of analysis or insight.
I like how the title has hardly anything to do with the roving content of the article. And the Republican party had plenty of pre-existing problems. I hardly think that Palin can be considered to have broken it. And while it may be clever to title an article with a nod to the saying "you broke it you buy it," buying has nothing to do with anything here. The title is a mess and indicative of what follows.
John Tantillo is a branding expert and does a weekly brand winner/loser post on his blog. In last week's post, he named political pundits the 'brand loser' for being out of touch, predicting their decline as they listen "to their own little echo chamber"--and named Palin the brand winner, explaining that it is entirely consistent with her personal brand, and thus actually positions her for a future in politics if she should want one. In resigning, she stood behind her own family values (as her family was being dragged through the mud by the media) and her stance against waste (as she was watching millions of AK $s be spent on frivolous investigations). http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/07/08/john-tantillos-brand-winner-and-loser-sarah-palin-and-political-pundits.aspx
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