The presidential race is down to just a little over two weeks. No one knows at this point who will come out on top, although the Obama camp sure wants to make it look inevitable. (Remember, that's a strategy.)
The thing that's surprised me the most over the past two weeks has been the finicky flight of some name-brand members of the conservative punditocracy, not over a lack of conservative stringency by candidate John McCain, but due to their apparent distaste over the plainspoken campaign style of Sarah Palin.
Amusingly, their flight to the DC/NYC highbrow tall grass has also been coupled with squeals of offended sensibilities when their rightist colleagues with more insight and fortitude have counter-attacked. It reminds me of the "free speech" types who can't stand the notion that their ideas would attract competing speech and then cry "oppression," etc.
Mark Steyn has a few pertinent thoughts about the situation.
If it weren't for small towns, suburbs and rural districts, there would be no conservative government at all. With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), "blue states" mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California). Almost by definition, an effective conservative executive - the kind you might want in the White House - can only come from flyover country.So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he's mocking conservatism as it's actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter. [...] A township that digs its own wells and plows its own roads is less susceptible to the beguiling notion that everything necessary in life is a mysterious "government service" to be provided by faceless bureaucrats far away.
Kathryn Jean Lopez has related observations.
[It] has become increasingly clear that there are people who just can’t stand Palin, and there are people who simply love her. And the “can’t stand” crowd seems to be dominated by talking-head and editorial-page types, and the “simply love” crowd tends to be regular Janes and Joes (Six-Pack and otherwise), and those — like talk-radio hosts — who hear from them daily. [...]As for those on the Right who reject Palin, I don’t think elite talking heads reject Palin because they reject, reflexively, the voice of the grassroots. I don’t accuse them of disliking, disapproving of, or downright hating Palin for any other reasons than the ones they enumerate — but I do think they might be missing why it is that her candidacy resonates and why that energy is much desired: A winning coalition has to be of and with the people who live outside Washington and New York. In this, Palin serves as an important reminder, perhaps, to northeastern conservatives.
Conservatism is not a fringe movement. Nor is it an elite movement. Nor is it a Washington movement. (It’s certainly not a New York movement.) Sarah Palin represents that. Here is a woman who hasn’t spent her life going to Heritage Foundation working groups or Manhattan Institute luncheons — and yet she gets it. In this respect, she is a conservative success story — she is a living, breathing, executive example of how widespread and adaptable a movement we are. Even in the most remote state of the Union.
Apparently more than the Washington bureacracy needs reform.
Posted by Alan at October 19, 2008 06:27 PM