From the presidential peanut gallery in New Hampshire this week, Sarah Palin finally showed her hand.
The Tea Party has declared Mitt Romney is a non-starter for them. Their reigning spokesperson Sarah Palin weighed in from New Hampshire, as Romney declared his candidacy in a speech that claimed “Barack Obama has failed America.”
When a reporter followed up that Romney has distinguished his state mandate from the federal one President Obama signed into law in 2010, Palin responded that even state mandates are problematic.
“He makes a good argument there that it does. States rights and authority and responsibility allowed in our states makes more sense than a big centralized government telling us what to do,” she said.
“However, even on a state level and even a local level, mandates coming from a governing body, it’s tough for a lot of us independent Americans to accept, because we have great faith in the private sectors and our own families … and our own businessmen and women making decisions for ourselves. Not any level of government telling us what to do.” (emphasis added)
Don’t look now but we now know Sarah Palin’s role. She’s the wingnut ombudsman from Tea Party country putting the Republican establishment on notice. Keeping them honest, making sure they are held accountable and in the process she intends to make Mitt Romney a pariah among right-wing primary voters.
That might have worked during the 2008 cycle. This time Mitt Romney looks much more prepared to blast right past his critics, intent on zeroing in on one message that no Democrat can honestly say won’t hit home: the economy.
It won’t stop Sarah, who intends to throw pot shots at presidential wannabe Romney, who Tea Partiers like Palin believe are not keeping true to We the People, as defined by her clan, a significant group who holds sway over who wins the primary.
It’s from this perch she’ll also amass her 2012 platform for Fox News channel as conscience of the new conservatives.
Barry Goldwater is cringing from beyond.
Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.