The Greatest Danger to the Republican Party: Sarah Palin

The Republican Party is in serious trouble. So is the United States.

For the first time since the 1930's there is a charismatic  American political leader with a populist bent who can lead a viable political movement towards fascism.

She is already following in the path of Charles Coughlin who linked arms in the 1930's with Charles Lindberg to build a 'peoples movement' focused to drive out the dual demons, Wall Street and the Communists.

With life imitating art and art imitating life, what comes to mind is Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, the Frank Capra motion picture, Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, and Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004).

The problem for the Republicans is that Palin owns the "god, guns, and gays" element of the Republican Party. She locked up the base the way John McCain, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush or even Ronald Reagan could only pretend to embrace. They engaged the abortion issue, guns, and the religious right, and the hatred for American institutions becasue it was politically exepedient.

Sarah Palin is a true believer and the base can tell the real thing.

Now she can lock up a presidential nomination for 2012. Even if the moderate Republicans can hold her off, Palin can bolt, and form her own Populist Party, and relegate the GOP to third party status.

The Neocons are at a loss as to what to do with her. Wall Street must be saved and they know that Communism is a phony issue.

For the rest of us, the challenge is stopping her and a movement with deep roots in American history that claims to appeal to the average Joe, Jane, or John Doe, be they plumber or not.

Author's note:

In his New York Times book review of The Plot Against America, Paul Berman reminds us that Jack London wrote about the topic, though fascism did not exist in 1908, the year The Iron Heel was published:

''The Iron Heel,'' in 1908, from the period before the word ''fascism'' even existed (though fascism was plainly what London had in mind, in the form of a plutocratic-Republican trade union dictatorship). Nearly 30 years later, Nathanael West produced a variation of his own called ''A Cool Million,'' which the Library of America resurrected not long ago — a freaky picture of an America taken over by murderous right-wing screwballs.

Comments

[Keith Schmitz]

I know Germans made light of a nobody paper-hanger, but odds are Palin will be heading back to some trouble in Alaska.

There may be a number of people who are now taking a closer look at her and are somewhat resentful that outsiders from the McCain campaign meddled in state business by injecting their lawyers into the dismissal of the state safety commission.

That guy might even be enticed to run against her.

We all will certainly keep an eye on her and not minimize her appeal to the slightly off-balanced.

Between now and 2012 the neocons will be rudderless and if they don't dissolve into history will be flitting back and forth between possibles, Bund-Rally Barbie being one of them.

[jonathan barry]

Good grief Paul. Get a grip.

[Rusty]

You have hit the nail on this one Paul. We are a conservative nation. We always will be and whatever we do the liberals never succeed very long in American Politics. Help us on this one lord a ballot with Palin and Elizabeth in 2012 could happen.

[ex-pat cheesehead]

Sarah Palin is the natural culmination of the Republican strategy to move from substance to image based campaigning.

Is there any surprise that the highest paid member of the McCain staff is Sarah Palin's make up artist?

[Terrence Berres]

"For the first time since the 1930's there is a charismatic American political leader with a populist bent who can lead a viable political movement towards fascism."

And before we know it, UW law students will again be required to wear a coat and tie for a senior photo. 'First they came for the guy in his undershirt, and I did not speak out...'

[michael donnelly]

Paul, I hope you're right.

Many of the Republicans in power today got there by taking advantage of the power base that, as you accurately state, Sarah Palin truly represents. If she makes a run at president going for the votes of that demographic, that will put the republicans in a very interesting position. They won't be able to go for the "god, guns, and gays" vote because Palin will have that sewn up. Instead they'll have to fall back on the fiscal, rather than social, conservatism that was the hallmark of their party before that fell under the sway of corporate cronyism and socially conservative image mongering.

My thought is that it would be good for America either way. If the Republicans change enough to emerge successfully from under that cloud, they'll be a rational, fiscally conservative party. If they don't, they'll fall by the wayside. While Palin would have plenty of supporters, I don't think she'd have enough to win an election. And her rocky relationship with corporate America makes it unlikely that they'd be reaching deep into their pockets to support her.