The Palin Persuasion: A case for the new populism

If Sarah Palin visits Nashville on her book tour, she really ought to stop by the Hermitage. Andrew Jackson's plantation is a lot more than a beautifully restored example of Greek Revival architecture and design. It's also a monument to the seventh president's democratic legacy--of rule by the people, of competitive commercial markets, of entrepreneurial individuals lighting out to the territories. It's a legacy to which Palin is heiress. And one she ought to embrace.

The Eu runs a continuous unemployment rate of 10-20% depending on which state and when.

So it’s the new normal for lame-stream America?

I also note that most EU countries are dead broke now.

Continetti is the author of “The Persecution of Sarah Palin”.
This article is quite interesting, but I don’t think that Palin is a “populist” (which has a positive or negative meaning)... she’s a common sense Conservative, plain and simple.
“Populism” all too often smacks of telling people what they want to hear. Palin is standing on principle and speaks truth to power.
A populist in the sense of representing the people - yes.
A populist in the sense of being a opportunist - no.

As I said... in this sense yes.

But there is also this definition, with a more negative connotation:

populism [ˈpɒpjʊˌlɪzəm]

(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a political strategy based on a calculated appeal to the interests or prejudices of ordinary people

Collins English Dictionary

Democrat's promising "freebies" is also a form of populism... appealing to other interest groups, but a form of "populism" as well.

And Palin? Time and again, she has run against elites who, in her view, are ignoring the public interest. She overthrew a three-term incumbent mayor of Wasilla because he wasn't as conservative as the people he represented. She used sales tax revenues and bond issues to help the town grow into a thriving suburb. She knocked off a Republican energy commissioner, a Republican attorney general, and an incumbent Republican governor because she felt that they were helping themselves and their friends and not the Alaskan people. As governor, she passed a sweeping ethics reform, changed the tax code so Alaskans got their fair share of oil revenues, and introduced competition and transparency into the construction of a natural gas pipeline.

Palin has an intuitive faith in builders and traders, in hockey moms and plumbers. She is clearly on the side of competitive, entrepreneurial capitalism. But she hasn't spent much time on the national stage. Nor has she tied her pointed criticisms of the Obama agenda and the liberal media to a larger argument about how ordinary people with common sense can rescue the American economy and revitalize American democracy. Palin has Jacksonian instincts, but she still hasn't forged her own political persuasion. Time to add flesh to the bone.

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