Steve Flesher: Sarah Palin's Reagan Qualities

Via Steve Flesher at American Thinker:

Sarah Palin has taken the country by storm, electrifying the grassroots conservative movement in a way no Republican presidential or vice-presidential candidate has been able to in a very long time.

The last person responsible for uniting grassroots conservatives to such an energizing degree was the great conservative himself, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan was the grassroots rebel to the mainstream media in a weary America -- entrenched in weak national defense and poor economic leadership, which barely withstood four years of Jimmy Carter.

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Just like Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin got involved in politics by taking small steps. Reagan began writing speeches (which often espoused political messages supporting pro-business conservatism) while working for General Electric. Sarah Palin got involved with her local PTA and ran for city council of her small town because she was concerned about how her tax dollars were being spent.

Just as Ronald Reagan did, Palin contains an instantly recognizable honesty factor among the grassroots. Through honesty, both politicians' careers in public service continued to escalate in small but definitive steps.

Though he was honest and had good intentions, Ronald Reagan was dropped from General Electric as his speeches continued to grow more effective and persuasive. Identically, Sarah Palin made a large handful of political enemies in both parties in Alaska when, with the people's best interest at heart, she took on the same type of establishment politicians and opinions which continue to criticize her to this day.

Two years after his dismissal from General Electric, and in the same year Sarah Palin was born, Ronald Reagan kicked off the start of his enormous grassroots influence on a national level by giving his famed "Barry Goldwater" speech in 1964. Similarly, Sarah Palin remained impressively modest while giving one of the most powerful and effective speeches of all time during the 2008 Republican National Convention.

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Just like Reagan, Palin continues to plow through her opposition, remaining successful by holding onto the nationwide support she had from last year while growing an entire base of new admirers from the bottom up. With the left and the elite Republicans scrambling for their best anti-Palin rhetoric while she innocuously sells her book, one wonders what they will come up with if she ever does run for president.

Most importantly, given classic Reagan history, and while some in the media ponder whether Sarah Palin will ever get support from Washington's beltway, all grassroots conservatives seem to be energized by the obvious: She never needed it.

Read the whole thing here.