When the nation is in trouble, “common sense conservativism” sure sounds mighty attractive, even if you do not know, or much care, what precisely it means. Sarah Palin is a politician who has her finger right on the pulse of the ordinary American.
If you are a “common sense conservative” then that implies that other conservatives, such as perhaps “compassionate conservatives”, are naive utopians who brought disaster on the nation, which makes them very like the “hope and changies” of the nutty left.
And Sarah Palin, after explaining she is “common sense conservative” then proceeds to stick it to the Bush/Obama regime for pissing away trillions of dollars, nearly a year’s income for every American:Sarah Palin, Hong Kong, CLSA Asia Pacific Markets Conference, Sept. 23, 2009
We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn’t yet afford to own a home. In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians.
“Good natured but wrong headed” Can you say “compassionate conservative” and “hope and change”?
Observe the reaction: The speech was supposedly boring. It was also supposedly so outrageous that people walked out in disgust. Furthermore, she supposedly did not say anything. She said nothing, nothing, nothing, NOTHING – a reaction that sounds like people sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming “I can’t hear you”, a sure sign that a politician has struck gold, for it is clear that she said something, and that that something was very far from boring.
Eric Raymond has an interesting essay from last year claiming that Sarah Palin is right on the center of the American political spectrum. That she seems to be right wing partly because she’s been painted so, and partly because “preference falsification” has made the political center seem more to the left than it really is.
I’m not sure he’s correct, but I am convinced that if Palin is to the right of the American political median, it’s not by very much. Which is a contrast to the way her opponents claim that she’s a crazy-extremist-far-far-to-the-right-nut whose political base is down in the asterisks.
Yes, of course Sarah Palin is dead center of the American electorate. She is veering slightly to the right (center left of the Republican party) until such time as she has the nomination sewed up, while leaving herself sufficient room to move back to electoral center after the nomination – the standard trajectory for Republican presidential hopefuls.
McCain and Obama on the other hand, represent the center of the Cathedral: the center of the New York Times, the center of the public service, and the center of the professoriat. McCain was the Cathedral candidate, rather than a Republican candidate, reflecting the the fact that the Cathedral hates Republicans and recently has gone pretty much insane with hate, so the Cathedral nominated a candidate for the Republican party that Republicans hated, and who hates Republicans – since no one who does not hate Republicans, and who Republicans do not hate, seemed normal or sane to them.