The Secret Power Of Palin
Posted on September 15th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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It is a measure of how completely scripted and captive Palin has become that there are now people offering counterintuitive theories that she is cunningly lulling her captors into a false sense of security before taking over the entire operation herself:
Her few genuine words on foreign policy indicate her positions are hardly the modern Republican norm. She is “unusual” on pot smoking and benefits for gays and juror nullification. The Republicans are underestimating her role as a Hegelian agent of world-historical change [bold mine-DL], just as the Democrats did at first.
Which narrative do you find more plausible?:
“Lovely Sarah, she’s saying and doing everything we want her to. What a quick learner. How pliable she is. Remember Descartes on tabula rasa?”
“Once John and I are elected, they’ll need me more than I need them.”
The people who are right now the happiest may end up the most concerned. For better or worse, they’re about to lose control of their movement.
Hegelian agent of world-historical change? Frankly, this is even crazier than the “she’s a secret Buchananite secessionist” notion that briefly enchanted some of my colleagues. Let’s be very clear about this: she will either become a predictable vessel of everything that is wrong with the GOP today, or she will be marginalized and steadily undermined from within by those who support everything that is wrong with the GOP today. You can hope that she will be a champion of Republican transformation, or you can hope that she will be influential and will become the heir apparent leader of both movement and party, but it has become simply ridiculous to expect both at the same time–they are mutually exclusive. To respond to Rod’s question, “Might Sarah Palin steal the conservative movement out from under the noses of the old guard?” I’m afraid the answer is no.
Filed under: politics
Maybe I’ve just read too much Röpke of late (or, more precisely, spent too much time reading him, slowly, as time permits), but the last chapter of his A Humane Economy has compelled me to consider dropping the word “conservative” (at least without multiple qualifiers) in favor of “decentrist”. We can call ourselves traditional, or paleo-, or whatever-conservatives, but we remain such a minority, and the movement “conservatives” continue to offer the proposition that they are conservatives, a risible proposition to which the media, and the left, accede all too easily, rather than noting that the “right” shares a striking number of general policy views with them; we might be doing ourselves a complete disservice even by trying to “save” the descriptor “conservative”.
Libertarians can be incredibly naive politically. If Palin does have a secret agenda, her opportunity to put it into effect is now, before the election, when McCain needs her, not after the election, when she is almost powerless.
Example: If Palin really favors change in the drug war, she could tell McCain (on pain of her resigning as veep nominee) to denounce the War on Medical Marijuana and pledge to pardon every medical marijuana provider convicted by the Feds in contradiction to state laws, such as Charlie Lynch of Morro Bay, California, whose dispensary had a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by members of the city council, but now is facing a de facto life sentence after being convicted by the feds.
My guess is that McCain would buckle if she demanded this, and that no, she won’t demand anything like this.