Conservatives who value intellectual vitality no longer have a party to call their own in the United States. The line-ups outside bookstores and endless media coverage of Sarah Palin’s new memoir Going Rogue drives home this gloomy point.
It’s easy to dismiss Palin as an outlier in the Republican Party. Her gaffes on the campaign trail (we all remember that she can see Russia from her house), her affinity for rural pastimes like hunting (from her helicopter), and her repetition of buzzwords like “maverick” make her fodder for satirists. However, with the conservative movement at its lowest intellectual ebb since the 1960s, and with the Republican Party now home to Joe-the-Plumber-style populism, there’s a credible threat that Palin could become the next Republican nominee for president. We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her.
Palin’s no-apologies style of conservatism has positioned her as the choice of deeply conservative Republican activists—the same ones who vote in primaries and choose presidential nominees. But she also has the ability to engage voters who would otherwise stay home. Republican moderates have virtually been eliminated from the party. There is the recent example of Dede Scozzafava—a Republican Congresswoman Congressional candidate from New York who is pro-choice and for gay marriage. She was forced to end her campaign due to lack of support. A far right candidate challenged Scozzafava, and was subsequently endorsed by several notable Republicans, including Palin. In another election, Florida’s Republican Governor Charlie Crist, who has a moderate record on environmental and economic issues, opted to run for the Senate in 2010 and is facing a challenge in the primaries from conservative Marco Rubio, who has criticized Crist for being too liberal.
However, the most striking example of the rightward Republican shift has occurred in New England. The last Republican members of Congress from New England were defeated in the 2008 elections, marking the first time in nearly 150 years that the region has not had any Republican representation. While New England voters tend to vote Democratic, other factors have erased Republicans from the region—mainly inadequate financial support for moderates, and challenges by more extreme conservatives preventing moderates from running at all.
While Republican moderates would be unlikely to support Palin, the sad truth is that very few of them exist to oppose her.
There are no credible candidates likely to seek the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney is an alternative, but the problems which plagued him last time he sought the nomination will not disappear. He is still an unapologetic member of the Republican Establishment—the people who officially run the party—running with a moderate record. But in a conservative, anti-Establishment climate, that record will hurt him. Newt Gingrich has never been popular nationally, Mike Huckabee will once again not get the support of the fiscal conservatives he needs, and Tim Pawlenty barely registers with voters outside of his home-state of Minnesota.
All of these factors lead to the unhappy conclusion that Sarah Palin is a serious contender for the Republican nomination. She should not be dismissed, lest we find ourselves with a President Palin. That would certainly be no laughing matter.
Illustration by Cristina Diaz-Borda
