"When they laugh at Sarah Palin, we feel them laughing at us"

"We're ordinary barbarians here. No one controls us. We're a horde," writes R.A. Mansour, co-editor of Conservatives 4 Palin, an unaffiliated group blog that speaks to our heart and mind as a member of the "pooh-poohed-by-the-anti-Palin-pooh-bahs" community. We love C4Ps banner (detail, above). Echoes of Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World."

"Sarah Palin is our voice. When they laugh at her, we feel them laughing at us. Someday we'll have the last laugh," writes R.A. Mansour of Conservatives4Palin:

The latest Rasmussen polling numbers were quite instructive. Palin's biggest group of supporters are young, unmarried, and not social conservative evangelicals. Her supporters do not view her as the social conservative candidate. Social conservatives prefer Huckabee as a candidate in 2012; however, they think just as highly of Sarah Palin as they do Huckabee. Sarah Palin's considerable base of supporters are attracted to her because she is the Beltway Outsider. She is the ordinary American who is fed up with the arrogant and incompetent Beltway elites who got us into the mess we're in and yet still show such disdain for the ordinary hardworking people who want nothing more than for their government to be "on their side and not in their way."

"Like virtually all political observers, I was at first surprised by Governor Palin's decision to hand the reins of Alaska governance over to Lieutenant Governor Parnell," admits Nebraska-based libertarianTim Lindell, another C4P co-editor whose perfect-pitch "Palin is now free to exercise her real power" in the Alaska Dispatch catches the commentariat mid flight, "wheeling and swooping" in self-protective unison:

On the national stage, it sent the entirety of the political and chattering classes hurtling into the air like a flock of geese flushed by a hunter, flapping wildly and honking their displeasure.

"More importantly, the news was burning up the venue in which Palin's core of supporters and advocates resides — the conservative blogs," continues Lindell:

And it was the subject of endless discussion in the places where her national constituency gather and live … at backyard Fourth of July barbeques, in the bleachers at Little League baseball games, at small-town fireworks displays, in the kitchens and around the dining tables of family gatherings over the holiday weekend. These are people who don't obsessively follow politics but are beginning to awaken with a deep sense of disgust for the condition of our national political discourse … and an equally deep sense of disgust for the politicians of both parties that have brought us here, and for the media that enabled them. To these folks, who often refer to Palin as "Our Sarah," each attack by the Beltway class simply slaps another layer of concrete on their support for her …

In our jaded and cynical times, we expect politicians to speak in the language of vagueness and spin, making it necessary to sift through endless verbal dross to find nuggets of truth. But Palin speaks plainly [same point made by Politico's Roger Simon in "The sins of Sarah Palin" the other day] and spoke clearly about her reasons in her Friday announcement, reasons both personal and political.

The WSJs John Fund has the story behind the story, great stuff:

People close to Sarah Palin say national political reporters and pundits have missed the real reasons for her surprising decision to resign as Alaska governor. The national media have dismissed or downplayed her real motives, which had little to do with any plans to run for president in 2012.

Contrary to most reports, her decision had been in the works for months, accelerating recently as it became clear that controversies and endless ethics investigations were threatening to overshadow her legislative agenda. "Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration," someone close to the governor told me. "She was fully aware she would be branded a 'quitter.' She did not want to disappoint her constituents, but she was no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself."

This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy.

Meanwhile, stuck in their anti-Palin Pauline-Kael bubbles, national political reporters continue to miss the point. One example that caught our eye: Reporting on the Iowa GOPs invitation for Palin to headline their annual Reagan Day Dinner, CBS led with "Despite announcing her resignation, Sarah Palin is still a sought-after asset in the Republican Party." As we wrote years ago re "out-of-touch elites who have fallen for their own rhetoric" regarding GWs persistent popularity in the wake of iraq and the 9/11 hearings, "Because of, not in spite of, stupid!"

Update: Marketing and branding expert John Tantillo agrees:

She made a choice that came out of the deepest part of herself (her core brand) — no wonder the political class was left scratching its collective head. They hadn't taken her claims of loving her family seriously. But the wives and mothers who make up Palin's supporters got it …

She's a woman who means what she says and does what she believes.

It's her "core brand," stupid!

Update: "Over at sisu, there's a great piece on Governor Palin," blogs KT Cat at The Scratching Post. Thanks, Maximum Leader!

Update II: Maggie's links!

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

She has already begun to speak out firmly and sensibly. By the 2010 campaign, she will be firmly entrenched as the best GOP spokeswoman and will be in a much more unassailable position - hopefully without the negativity of the chattering classes!