Palin Hints At Third Party To Save Republican Party From — Liberal Control (?)

Radio talk show host/blogger Tammy Bruce reports that Sarah Palin is hinting at a third party movement to save the Republican party from liberal control. Here’s the quote:

In an interview with the Washington Times, Palin makes her most direct comments yet about Conservatism versus the Republican Party….Enter now Sarah Palin with very encouraging comments that lead one to believe that she is indeed planning to do what she must: build an independent conservative movement and take this nation back from the liberals which now control both parties.Thanks liberals, for provoking Sarah into the national scene while vetting that family at the same time.

One thing I will say, the Washington Times with their headline for this exclusive interview reveal an anti-Palin stance. She is, don’t doubt, a threat to every existing political status quo. I hope the Washington Times and their editors realize, sooner than later, that the Palin movement is unstoppable and their credibility would be saved simply by reporting the news instead of becoming a GOP version of the NYT.

Bruce then quotes from this article where Palin says she’ll stump for conservative Democrats who want her help.

It’s a good point. After all, the current Republican party is today controlled and influenced by a whole bunch of liberals.

These include such famous leftists such as Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, Gov. Haley Barbour, Senator John Cornyn, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl ,Senator Jeff Sessions, talk show host Rush Limbaugh, talk show host Sean Hannity, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and many more. Don’t forget the other liberal, far leftists who also held the levers of power and still are highly influential in the GOP: Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich — all of those liberals who appear on Fox News and are often interviewed by Rush and Sean and Glenn Beck.

Have the leftists started writing their diaries on the Daily Kos yet?

This quote is significant for several reasons.

It shows how within the GOP there really will be a battle royal between those who feel the party must become a bigger umbrella and appeal to moderate and progressive Republicans, independents and some Democrats, and those who want the GOP to become conservative — but with a conservatism that is not the same as Barry Goldwater’s or even Ronald Reagan’s.

In a long piece in today’s New York Times, Frank Rich argues that those dismissing Palin as finished or not reflecting an authentic segment within the GOP are deluding themselves:

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.

The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

That resentment is in part about race, of course. When Palin referred to Alaska as “a microcosm of America” during the 2008 campaign, it was in defiance of the statistical reality that her state’s tiny black and Hispanic populations are unrepresentative of her nation. She stood for the “real America,” she insisted, and the identity of the unreal America didn’t have to be stated explicitly for audiences to catch her drift. Her convention speech’s signature line was a deftly coded putdown of her presumably shiftless big-city opponent: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” (Funny how this wisdom has been forgotten by her supporters now that she has abandoned her own actual responsibilities in public office.)

All those Republican establishment party liberals who have been pretending to be conservatives on Fox News and talk radio should take note when they secretly read their latest issue of The Nation. Rich concludes:

These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised — by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

For a week now, critics in both parties have had a blast railing at Palin. It’s good sport. But just as the media muttering about those unseemly “controversies” rallied the fans of the King of Pop, so are Palin’s political obituaries likely to jump-start her lucrative afterlife.

Take that Peggy Noonan, you secret Democratic Underground poster, you….

FOOTNOTE: Palin linked to Bruce’s piece which suggests Bruce’s interpretation of it is not offbase.