Tag Archive for 'Fox'

Sarah Palin managed to make a couple of headlines this past week. She has now joined FOX News to add, uh… “commentary” to their already craptastic lineup of such Neo-Cons as Bill O’Reilly, Mike Huckabee and Sean Hannity.

This is significant, as the Republican base is now more fractured then it has been in decades. On the one side are entrenched, party-supporting, party-loving Neo-Cons who believe that George W. Bush was at the very least a “decent” president and would generally support anyone the party puts forward for local and state elections. Then there are the people who suddenly found a voice in the conservative movement over the past few years, as a few lone “kooky” leaders rose above the Neo-Conservative dominance. Some of them came in through Ron Paul, some through Glenn Beck and some through other libertarian oriented republicans.

But regardless how they came, they have now arrived, and are furious with many in the Republican party.

Sarah Palin, who despite what people may think of her ideals, unwaveringly supported John McCain and has demonstrated a relatively strict adherence to Neo-Conservative philosophy. Yes, she’s charming, and her personality speaks to middle and rural America – but were she to have her druthers, America would go back to the glory days of 2004. For more on Palin, see the American Conservative‘s Southern Avenger:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RgW5tgDIxY[/youtube]

This is why the second headline is so significant – that Sarah Palin will be giving the keynote address at the First National Tea Party Convention (for $100,000, I might add). The first “Tea Party” in the modern era was a fundraiser for Ron Paul – a man who represents libertarian-conservatism – quite the opposite of Palin’s big-government, daddy-state nationalism. And when “tea parties” became vogue – they were much more about Paul’s ideology: ending the Fed, dramatic reductions in spending, dramatic reductions in taxes, a restoration of civil liberties and support for capitalism. For the most part – these ideologies remain present, but Palin has managed to grab on to this movement and is doing a great job at steering these radical conservatives back towards the status-quo GOP ship of state.

The Tea-Party movement represents a rogue element in the political landscape. If it remains independent, then even Jesus Christ would lose as a Republican against Obama in 2012, because the Tea Party would likely vote independent. And this scares the crap out of the GOP, as Tea Party activists especially do not seem willing to vote for a standard Neo-Conservative like Mitt Romney, John McCain or Newt Gengrich. But Palin may be the key to working the Tea Party movement in such a way that within the next two years, they find themselves supporting the republican nominee (who will likely be against many of the issues they currently support).

This was done in 2004 with personalities such as Michael Savage, Larry Elder and  Neal Boortz gathering a “libertarian” audience very angry with George W. Bush about immigration, fiscal policy and even “socialism” but these supporters were soon channelled into voting for Bush in 2004 because he was “better than Kerry.”

And that will be the ultimate judge of Palin’s success with the Tea Party movement. In 2012, will the people criticising the Federal Government on socialism, spending and bailouts vote for a socialistic Neo-Con simply because he is “better than Obama?” This will reveal both the genius of Palin’s actions, but also the fickleness and lack of principles in the conservative movement.