Palin, Dobbs and Rand

Neither Palin nor Dobbs has any type of political future—the former because of her ignorance and thin skin, the latter because of his bigot’s baggage. But if you surround Dobbs’ brain with Palin’s sensual warmth, add Beck’s acting skills, top it all off with the moderate-seeming polish of a Mitt Romney, and then throw in a dash of the new Newt Gingrich’s “ideas” and “skepticism” and “detachment,” you’ll have something like the populist Frankenstein that will, tragically, come to dominate American politics. –Lee Siegel, The Daily Beast, “A Populist Frankenstein” h/t HotAir

Did Lee Siegel really compare the political futures of Sarah Palin and Lou Dobbs? Don’t know if you caught that, ladies, but he pointed out Palin’s sensuality and Dobbs’s brain. Welcome to The Liberal Enlightenment, America 2009 Edition. With the sensitivity of Eric Cartman and the political sensibilities of Archie Bunker, Siegel has foretold the future of Liberalism. With foes like Siegel, who needs friends?

I’ll give Siegel credit – he actually manages to give Ayn Rand a sliver of her due, and he warns Liberals to ignore her at their peril. He is eerily accurate in his phrasing, although wildly off the mark regarding his, um, mark, while covering his contempt for women only slightly better than Pres. Obama. Early in the piece cited above, he writes:

This is too bad, because if you can’t understand the popularity of Ayn Rand, you are never going to understand either the popularity of Lou Dobbs, or what seem to be Dobbs’ outsized political ambitions.

This is fascinating. Co-opting Siegel’s sentence structure and happily perverting it, I would state that if you can’t understand the popularity of Sarah Palin, you are never going to understand the grassroots reaction to what is happening in America, 2009.

Siegel is haphazardly using Ayn Rand as an exotic gateway drug to begin understanding the allure of Sarah Palin. Unlike Rand, Palin isn’t so … off-putting.

Before continuing, say what you will of Gov. Palin’s politics, but how drunk does one have to be to declare that Gov. Palin has no political future? I know there’s a Liberal bias in the media, but when the good ship MSNBC is sending out their microphoned hitgals to sleepy Midwestern towns in the dead of night to interrogate teenagers supporting a politician MSNBC keeps reminding us is irrelevant, methinks said figure might have a future.

Oh, and that thin-skinned canard? Let us put aside for a second that while Pres. Obama coolly said family should be off-limits while watching the press devour Gov. Palin’s offspring whole, it wasn’t Gov. Palin who convened a joint session of Congress to refute something Obama said about her plan for health care, on Facebook no less.

Which brings me to this: Do you, Palinphobe, really want the only well-known national political figure who’s demonstrated she’s unafraid to bring a chainsaw to a knife fight regarding The One going toe-to-toe against him? Not since Charles Bronson was rockin’ like Dokken have I so looked forward to witnessing the practical results of a death wish.

Siegel’s piece offers up more insight about the enduring popularity of Rand than I thought possible for a Liberal to admit. Yet, Liberals show their cards when they’re not even aware they’re holding them. Consider Siegel’s contrast of Beck, Dobbs and Gov. Palin with Pres. Obama:

Even Obama’s eloquence is no match for their breathtakingly expressive one-dimensionality.

Do Liberals still not realize, off-prompter, Pres. Obama is about as eloquent as Porky Pig absent the social graces? As for dimensions, the only dimension Pres. Obama has shown in public is Me, if “Me” is in fact a dimension. When I think of monodimensionality, I think of the wonderful edit of Obama-at-UN, where he shakes the hand of 160 leaders and his posture and smile never change. He may not be a one-dimensional cardboard cutout, but he certainly does well playing one on the talking picture box.

As a resident Ayn Rand dork here at C4P, I have no problem admitting that I occupy that strange political ground where I’m both a supporter of Gov. Palin while being heavily influenced by Rand. Rand certainly would have disliked Sarah Palin for many reasons, among them being one of the reasons she disliked Bill Buckley and dismissed Fred Nietzsche. As she famously told him the first time they met, “You’re much too intelligent to believe in God!” Like Nietzsche and a host of others, Rand would have dismissed Gov. Palin as a mystic, and like Niestzsche, Gov. Palin’s reputation would not be harmed.

What Rand and Gov. Palin share – there’s six words you probably weren’t expecting to see spackled together – is that both tap into a well of unabashed American goodwill. Bluntly, Rand’s enduring influence and Palin’s continued grasp on the American imagination (and Liberal mystification of both women’s popularity) spring from the fact that no matter how much you call a person and those who admire them stupid, some messages are beyond vituperation.

Both express values shared by most Americans: through hard work, grit, and determination, you can become whatever you want. Ayn Rand, an immigrant who spoke limited English upon arrival to our shores, did it by writing two of the most popular and influential American novels of the twentieth century. Sarah Palin, a politically unconnected wife and mother, did it first by going door-to-door campaigning for city council and, well, you know the rest. Both women enjoy spectacular success, but many Americans – myself included – enjoy the same: hard work reaps benefits.

I’d like to think that Ayn Rand would chuckle that a woman like Gov. Palin is burning up the book charts while causing hissy fits among Libs like Siegel, trying to figure out whether or not she should be promoted or destroyed, all in the name of political gain. As an anti-mystic absolutist, Rand would never have admired a woman like Gov. Palin, but just for the fact that she pisses off all the right people, she might have secretly liked her. I have no need to reconcile my admiration for both women, I take my solace in this simple fact: Rand and Palin, like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, infuriate all the right people, and for that I am in their debt.