Gov. Palin Goes All In

Such, anyway, is Jay Valentine's analysis at American Thinker:

There is a point in tournament poker where one player doesn't have the chips to play out the next raise, but they have great cards, so they call "all in." At that point, nobody can raise them and the hand gets played out—either to a game changing win or a total loss for the person who made the call.

It appears Sarah Palin decided she and her family could no longer deal with the thousand cuts, so she is "all in."

The result, if I may be permitted to mix my poker metaphors, is that she has now upped the ante in a big way on her opponents. (Hey, I'm a preacher, what do I know about poker? I'd say "so sue me," but Andree McLeod might take me seriously.) If the Left and the elites (not completely coterminous) had been willing to let Gov. Palin go quietly back to Alaska and govern unmolested, yes, they would have had to deal with her again on the national level at some point, but they could have focused their energies on building up their own position. They couldn't leave her alone, though, and now they have a problem:

She has already established herself as a major player—candidate or not. More importantly, the wildly critical left has put her in a financial position where she has no choice but to speak out, perhaps do a book, and make the money she needs to pay legal bills for 15 unwarranted "ethics" investigations, all of which she handily won. The legal bills remain.

One doubts that when she speaks out, it will be about how to field dress a moose. Rather, she will take positions in speaking and writing about her core beliefs. That is a problem for the radical left of their own creation.

This is a key point. Gov. Palin's resignation, and the new tack she's going to take (whatever her exact actions and approach turn out to be) are a tactical and strategic response to a situation created by her opponents. They've been trying to drive her to a negative reaction; instead, she's freed herself to respond to them in a fashion which is both positive and potentially devastating, because she's freed herself to strike back at the Left in a way that actually hits home: by helping defeat their candidates elsewhere.

Having laid this much out, Valentine's argument takes a turn, as he shifts to a deeper conflict than left/right, that of the elites vs. ordinary barbarians (though he doesn't use the term; perhaps we should enlighten him). We've made the case here that that's the fundamental problem in our politics, and one of the big reasons for the hostility toward Gov. Palin from the professional punditocracy (especially its ostensibly conservative members); it appears Valentine agrees:

Palin enters the arena where the fight is not between liberal and conservative; nor is it between Republican and Democrat. The fight is between elite and the common person who works every day and continually asks how Washington D.C., under both parties, is so out of control.

[. . .]

Elitism is on display today as never before. Senate and Congressional seats are passed down in the family. Just look at the family members lining up for Ted Kennedy's seat or Caroline's assumption that she deserved the New York Senate seat. Vice President Biden's Senate seat is being kept warm for his son, now serving in the Middle East. Lots of talk that Michelle Obama may be the next Illinois senator.

Hereditary government on display. How much more elitist can a nation become?

The fight is between an out of control government led by media and government elites and common sense Americans, of both parties, who have had enough.

Valentine's right about this, I believe; but he doesn't stop with observation. Rather, he takes the next step to make a key argument about Gov. Palin's situation that I hadn't quite considered, but that I think packs a remarkable punch:

Sarah Palin is in the enviable, although personally painful position, of being the "anti elite" voice of common sense and shared American values.

The vicious left put her there and now they may live to regret it.

[. . .]

Sarah Palin takes on the "fancy people" from a position, eagerly given to her by her enemies, of being a "common" person who went to an ordinary college, has typical family problems, is married to a guy who works in an oil field, buys her kid's diapers at WalMart. If the fight is with the elites, what better background could one have?

What Valentine's essentially arguing here is that all the media attacks on Gov. Palin have truly accomplished is to fix her ever more firmly in people's minds as "not one of them," the elite—which is to say, by extension, as one of us, "the epitome of ordinary people," as she herself put it. They've done this in an effort to try to convince the voting public that she's not qualified to be "one of them," on the implicit assumption that only the elites are capable of leading the country.

That's a risk they've taken, and it might be a worthwhile one for them as long as voters in fact buy the line that she's unqualified. The thing is, though, they could make that case without too much fear of contradiction as long as Gov. Palin was leashed to the Juneau statehouse as Alaska's chief watchdog; but by resigning, she's slipped the leash, and is now free to go wherever she will to dispel that argument. Free to make her case to voters across America, to let them see for pretty much the first time the unfettered Sarah Palin in full-out campaign mode, she has the opportunity to shatter the "unqualified" myth like a giant pane of sugar glass—which she inarguably has the ability to do, with verve and panache.

In that event, all that will remain of the elites' attacks on her is the firm popular conviction that she's one of us, that she understands us and belongs to us in a way that the elites don't and never will; she will be firmly positioned, as Valentine says, as "the 'anti elite' voice of common sense and shared American values"—but as an anti-elite voice who has the wit and the will to lead this country well. In other words, she'll be firmly positioned in the popular mind as the true successor to Ronald Reagan; in other other words, she'll be the Left's and the elites' worst nightmare.

Go read the whole thing—not only is it all wonderful, but the guy deserves the traffic. (While you're at it, read J. R. Dunn's latest piece on the same site; I don't agree with all his conclusions, but some of his points and observations are excellent.) I have to leave you with Valentine's closing shot, which is simply beyond price:

What an irony if the only American President who can make a 3 point shot were taken out by a point guard who came up to his shoulder. And if the guard was a chick—who went to a no name school?