Tony Blankley: Palin Delivers Sparkle, Warmth

A couple days ago Slow Joe and the rest of the crew at MSNBC's ratings challenged Morning Joe made some remarkably obtuse observations about Governor Palin's speech to the Tea Party Convention and appearance on Fox News Sunday. Since, to put it mildly, she did very well, at both appearances, MSNBC's "analysis" seemed even more wacky than usual to me and that's saying a lot. Tony Blankley, in a column at the Washington Times, had a reaction similar to mine:

"No new ideas." That was the most prominent of the criticisms of Sarah Palin's speech at MSNBC's too-cool-for-school "Morning Joe" on Monday. The more general critique of former Gov. Palin's future was that while she certainly had star power, she could never speak to more than a fraction of even Republicans. The proof of the latter point was made with the evidence that many important Washington Republicans could never support her for more than cheerleader to her marginal people.

They also pointed out that she had kept out of races in Massachusetts and Virginia, where it was thought she might not help. Gosh, a lack of ego paired with shrewd political judgment - that is surely not wanted in a leader. (In both those incidents, the president himself couldn't resist going in and contributing to his candidates' losses.)

If I hadn't still been lying in bed, I would have fallen over laughing at this summary rejection by the guardians of the existing order of the only national figure who both: (1) unabashedly but politely criticizes President Obama where it hurts him most; and, (2) eye-catchingly articulates the central values and objectives of the about 60 percent of the public that views the current administration's actions with slack-jawed horror and fear.

The American people have had a belly full of new ideas in the last year. The next winning politician and party will only have to offer two "new ideas": Stop it now! (and) Start rolling it back immediately! It may take decades just to execute those two new ideas.

[...]

Americans rightly believe that we can build anything that needs building and fix anything that is broken. And, that we can do that by living out our nation's founding principles and values: constitutional government, respect for private property and life, a free market - and the gumption of hard-working, inventive Americans.

Those are the principles and spirit that Sarah Palin articulated with sparkle and sincerity last weekend. Those are the principles that have brought the Tea Party movement into being. They are the same principles that inspired the conservative movement that arose in the 1950s-60s.

Read the rest of Blankley's piece here.

Related: JohnHuang2 has a rather hilarious take on all this. An excerpt follows:

Having gotten himself so wee-wee'd up over Palin's speech, Obama can't stay on message even with the TelePrompTer, yapping about his failed healthcare fetish on Sunday, then Monday it's about jobs, then it's back to crappy healthcare "reform" in the afternoon. One Palin speech and hapless Obama's stricken with bladder control problems for a week. Then yesterday it was Obama's Grand Strategy for dealing with Palin, consisting of sending a dorky press secretary to prove his manhood by attacking the girl with his grocery list scrawled on his hand, likely with indelible ink. Oh dear. I'm sure the Moose-hunting, pistol-packin' frontiersmama is weeping in her mommy's arms after this gut-buster.

Read the rest here. It's quite funny.