The Appalling Sarah Palin and the GOP 's Future

She is the gift that keeps on giving. Seriously.

She keeps giving interviews that amount to completely revisionist history.

Andrew Sullivan and one of his smart readers--he has lots of them--note how she misremembers things, either intentionally or through sheer failure to grasp and own up to reality, but always to her own advantage:

Gotcha. The trouble is that Palin confuses what is settled reality and what is settled reality insider her own head.

Now, this is not necessarily an uncommon trait, but it is one that's lethal in someone who wants to lead others. Reality can be a slippery thing, but it's alarming that a vice-presidential candidate treats it as something to simply be molded to fit the moment.

What makes this phenomenon more alarming than it necessarily would have to be is that she is currently on an "Image Reclamation Tour":

Her media tour this week and her speech at the RGA on Thursday are all aimed at a single thing: establishing herself as a power player in the party over the next four years.

Expect Palin to make some appearances in key races -- maybe as soon as this month for Sen. Saxby Chambliss in his Georgia runoff -- to show her drawing power and popularity among grassroots Republicans.

For Palin's future prospects, the next few months are crucial. Will she be remembered as a blip in the Republican history books or a force to be reckoned with in 2012?

While amusing, since I don't "get" what makes people like her, the success of her trip will be an important consideration in future GOP politics, for the battle for the GOP's future is upon us, and Sarah Palin is right in the middle of it.

Just so you know, the GOP is counting on standing pat on the issues. Once again, they are convinced that the U.S. is a "center-right nation" and that voters will inevitably return to them, an assertion essentially unsupported by any evidence as voters last week rejected the center-right candidate:

What we're hearing instead from Republican politicians, pollsters and pundits is reassurance that the United States is a "center-right nation" with an innate distrust of progressive policies. The problem, these soothing voices say, is that under George W. Bush the GOP strayed from its basic philosophy of limited government and adopted the big-spending habits of the Democrats. Republicans need to rediscover their bedrock principles, this theory goes, and after a few years of rule by Barack Obama and his Democratic enablers on Capitol Hill, voters will come running home to papa.

So much is wrong with this analysis that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with the basic premise, that of a center-right American polity. To the extent that such a vague label has any real meaning, that may once have been the case. But if ours were a center-right electorate now, one imagines it might have been kinder to a center-right politician such as John McCain.

Amazing reading, really, amazing that after two consecutive beatings at the polls, the GOP still insists that they are the dominant faction in American politics.

David Brooks, writes today in the New York Times that the GOP is divided between Traditionalist and a Reformist wings. He writes:

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.

The Reformist view is articulated most fully by books, such as “Comeback” by David Frum and “Grand New Party” by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, as well as the various writings of people like Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Jim Manzi, Rod Dreher, Peggy Noonan and, at the moderate edge, me.

Note the crux of the distinction he makes: the thinkers Brooks labels Reformers are pretty much all conservative intellectuals who criticized Palin as unready and unsteady. This fact makes Sarah Palin a wedge issue for Republicans, something that divides them as a coherent political force.

Brooks pretty much concedes that the Traditionalists--Palin lovers--will dominate the near future of the GOP, which makes me smile, for Brooks knows what that will mean for them:

The debate between the camps is heating up. Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the G.O.P.

They are going to win, first, because Congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists. Republicans from the coasts and the upper Midwest are largely gone. Among the remaining members, the popular view is that Republicans have been losing because they haven’t been conservative enough.

Second, Traditionalists have the institutions. Over the past 40 years, the Conservative Old Guard has built up a movement of activist groups, donor networks, think tanks and publicity arms. The reformists, on the other hand, have no institutions.

There is not yet an effective Republican Leadership Council to nurture modernizing conservative ideas. There is no moderate Club for Growth, supporting centrist Republicans. The Public Interest, which used to publish an array of public policy ideas, has closed. Reformist Republican donors don’t seem to exist. Any publication or think tank that headed in an explicitly reformist direction would be pummeled by its financial backers. National candidates who begin with reformist records — Giuliani, Romney or McCain — immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base.

Finally, Traditionalists own the conservative mythology. Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.

This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with. But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.

In short, the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats. Then, finally, some new Reformist donors and organizers will emerge. They will build new institutions, new structures and new ideas, and the cycle of conservative ascendance will begin again.

On "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Brooks said a few more revealing things:

John McCain will have about as much influence going foward as Bob Dole did after the 1996 elections. Sarah Palin is reviled by significant factions of the party establishment, and even those conservatives who adore have no idea what she thinks about substantive issues. Mitt Romney was pretty liberal up until a few years ago; Mike Huckabee is loathed by the foreign policy establishment, and Bobby Jindal is 37 years old and believes in exorcisms.

Who's left? John Boehner? Newt Gingrich? Sean Hannity?

Deep thinkers, all, with the deepest thinker, Newt Gingrich, beset by a few, uh, ethical lapses.

The conservative spin game should in no way be underestimated. Jonah Goldberg today reveals that Bush was no conservative, and thus voter rejection of Bush in no way implies a repudiation of conservatism. In the following passage he uses "young Turks" to mean the same group Brooks, above, calls the Reformers, and he uses the "Limbaugh crowd" to mean the same group Brooks labels Traditionalists; he argues that Bush is the only thing keeping these two factions apart:

What is fascinating is that both camps seem implicitly to agree that the real challenge lurks in how to account for the Bush years. For the young Turks and their older allies -- my National Review colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin and David Frum, the Atlantic's Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, New York Times columnist David Brooks et al -- the problem is that Bush botched the GOP's shot at real reform. For the Limbaugh crowd, the issue seems to be that we've already tried this reform stuff -- from both Bush and McCain -- and look where it's gotten us.

Neither camp has adequately explained where Bush figures in their vision for the future of the party. Is reform going to be a debugged compassionate conservatism 2.0 or a Reaganesque revival of conservative problem solving? Does back-to-basics mean breaking with the precedents of the last eight years or building on them?

The irony is that both camps agree on a lot more than they disagree. The reformers are committed to market principles and reducing the size and role of government, and so are the back-to-basics crowd. The problem is that an elephant named George in the room is blocking each side from seeing what the other is all about. But hopefully not for much longer.

Since Palin is Bush minus the intellectual curiosity or facility for language, one must conclude they will remain disunited for now. Goldberg here is simply spinning, spinning, spinning. After all, Brooks is one of the few who's willing to admit that the GOP is ideologically bankrupt. Conceding that dumping Bush is good for conservatism fails to appreciate that Bush's non-conservative leanings and his so-called "Compassionate Conservatism" are probably what got him elected in the first place. Conservatism minus the "compassion" just isn't popular outside the South.

Here is a review of the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth in the conservative blogosphere. Good times.

P.S., I will have a post on the sheer idiocy and intellectual dishonesty of the "center-right nation" canard later tonight or sometime tomorrow. Until then...enjoy!