Friday, November 26, 2010

White Trash At The Gates

I've been going on today about Palin's gaffes, but in a serious post Robert Reich says it's all part of her plan. The ignorance of others is her power.

It’s all part of The Palin Strategy for becoming president in 2012 — or 2016 or 2020.

The Republican establishment doesn’t get it. Celebrity is part of The Palin Strategy – as is avoiding the insider game. She doesn’t want to do what Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, or Romney have to do. She has an outside game.

No prospective candidate so sharply embodies the anger of America’s white working class as does Palin. And none is channeling that anger nearly as effectively.

According to the right-wing narrative, the calamity that’s befallen the white working class is due to the global and intellectual elites who run the mainstream media, direct the government, dispense benefits to the undeserving, and dominate popular culture. (The story and targets are not substantially different from those that have fueled right-wing and fascist movements during times of economic stress for more than a century, here and abroad.)

As I believe will become clearer, the Palin Strategy will involve a political threat to the GOP establishment: Deny her the nomination she’ll run as independent. This will split off much of the white working class and guarantee defeat of the Republican establishment candidate. It will also result in her defeat in 2012, but that’s a small price to pay for gaining the credibility and power to demand the nomination in 2016, or threaten another third-party run in 2020.

More than anything else, the Palin Strategy depends on the continuing fear and anger of America’s white working class. She’s betting that their economic prospects will not improve by 2012, or even by 2016 and beyond.

Sadly, this is likely to be the case. [...]

It all fits into Sarah Palin’s strategy.

We can laugh at her blunders, and there are many and it's almost too much fun, but we'd better not underestimate her. Since ignorance and anger have been elevated to qualities, and the 'elites' are now those of us who can think and read and decide things for ourselves without FOXProp, we'd better be on guard.

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