Born to Party

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If you want to understand the Tea Party movement you should read Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by Senator James Webb of Virginia:

The Scots-Irish (sometimes called the Scotch-Irish) are all around you, even though you probably don’t know it. They are a force that shapes our culture, more in the abstract power of emotion than through the argumentative force of law. In their insistent individualism, they are not likely to put an ethnic label on themselves when they debate societal issues. Some of them don’t even know their ethnic label, and some who do don’t particularly care. They don’t go for group-identity politics any more than they like to join a union. Two hundred years ago the mountains built a fierce and uncomplaining self-reliance into an already hardened people. To them, joining a group and putting themselves at the mercy of someone else’s collective judgment makes as much sense as letting the government take their guns. And nobody is going to get their guns.

Webb wrote in a WSJ article*:

The Scots-Irish comprised a large percentage of Reagan Democrats, and contributed heavily to the “red state” votes that gave Mr. Bush the presidency in 2000. The areas with the highest Scots-Irish populations include New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, northern Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, southern Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and parts of California, particularly Bakersfield. The “factory belt,” especially around Detroit, also has a strong Scots-Irish mix.

These are my people – I am descended from redneck dirt farmers in Kansas and Oklahoma. There ain’t no royalty in my bloodline. At one time in my life I even lived in a single-wide mobile home. Yep, I’m trailer trash.

But we aren’t entirely unique – there are millions of Americans descended from the poor commoners of Europe, Mexico, Central and South America. These are places where the land was owned by aristocrats and the commoners worked the land or lived in the margins – the hills and swamps. They didn’t emigrate to the United States to get rich, they came here to make a living and to be left alone.

Mackubin T. Owens:

These are the “red state” voters. They are family-oriented, take morality seriously, go to church, join the US military, support America’s wars, and listen to country music. They strongly believe that no man is obligated to obey the edicts of a government that violates his moral conscience. They once formed the bedrock of the Democratic Party—from the time of Andrew Jackson until the Vietnam era—but they have been moving to the Republicans since then. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Webb called the Scots-Irish in America the “the secret GOP weapon.”

These people aren’t “country club” Republicans like the Bush family, they are the rank and file voters and they are the core of the Tea Party movement.

Bill Clinton understood these people because he is one of them, but the current crop of progressive schemers and plotters are clueless about them. Marc Ambinder doesn’t get it:

There is, in fact, a much better avatar of the Tea Party movement, someone whose very name provokes disgust among Democrats, someone whose name identification is 100 percent and whose ubiquity is extremely useful.

That person is Sarah Palin. All that’s required is for the President to utter her name a couple of times. The Fox-Rush-Redstate nexus would explode. Palin would bask in the attention and respond. And respond. And respond. The press would cover the story and ask why the President would elevate Sarah Palin? David Broder might write a column bemoaning the fact that the President chose politics over the institution of the presidency, which is supposed to respect the dignity of all Americans.

Elevate Sarah Palin? How much higher can she go? Everyone knows her. Some of Obama’s advisers have argued in the past that the attention paid to Palin by Americans in the last stages of the 2008 campaign is one reason why Obama was able to win so cleanly.

Palin and the Tea Party movement are not the same thing. The movement, evolving out of movement conservatism, is principally about government and the economy. Palin revels in the culture wars. But when that part of the Tea Party that does care about social issues becomes the story, linking the two in the public’s mind is easier.

Yes, the election is about control of Congress. But at a larger level, it’s about competing visions of the world. John Boehner v. the Democratic agenda is a boring contrast. Many Democrats couldn’t tell a Boehner from a Cantor. But everyone knows who Sarah Palin is.

The Tea Party is a populist movement. Oh, it got it’s start as a Dick Armey astroturf operation, but Frankenstein’s monster has escaped from the lab and is running amok around the countryside. The GOP establishment is almost as afraid of them as the Democrats are.

Sarah Palin is an authentic populist. The malefactors of great wealth spent millions of dollars to convince people that Barack Obama was the leader of a movement but it was all bullshit. Sarah Palin is the real deal.

Until she was selected by John McCain to be his running mate Palin was the virtually-unknown governor of a state large in size but small in population. She didn’t inherit the job, she took on incumbent governor Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and former Democratic governor Tony Knowles in the general election.

Palin was heavily outspent by both men but beat them anyway to become the youngest and first female governor of Alaska. Political ideology aside, her story is truly inspiring – it’s an American by-her-bootstraps success story.

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. – Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Starting with Troopergate the Obama campaign and the Journolistas threw everything including the kitchen sink at Sarah Palin. They even questioned whether Trig Palin was really her child or the son of her daughter Bristol.

Obot conventional wisdom is that Palin is the reason John McCain lost. The truth is she is the reason McCain almost won in a year the Democrats couldn’t lose.

After the 2008 election Palin returned to Alaska. Her story might have ended there, but for the obsessive Palin-hate among the Obots. They were determined to destroy her but their attacks had the opposite effect.

Sarah and Todd Palin had a combined income in the low six figures – well above the average but nowhere near the top. She had no wealthy backers or powerful friends. She lived a long, long way from Washington DC. When Palin resigned as governor the punditocracy gleefully declared her career over.

But she didn’t listen.

She wrote a book about her life and the 2008 campaign. The Obots mocked and jeered, but the book was a bestseller and crowds of people lined up to get autographed copies. She started making big bucks getting paid to give speeches to packed crowds. She used Facebook and Twitter to bypass the “lamestream media.”

Obots shook their tiny fists in impotent rage.

Meanwhile the Tea Party movement sprang into existence. It’s original astroturf intent was to motivate the right wing rank and file in opposition to Obama and the Democrats in Congress. But somebody forgot to tell the Tea Partiers it was just for show.

What followed was harmonic convergence – with the connivance of the Obamacrats Sarah Palin became the unofficial queen of the Tea Partiers. She started endorsing candidates in GOP primaries. Most, but not all of them were members of the Tea Party movement.  Many of them, like Christine O’Donnell and Kelly Ayotte, were women.

With the exception of John McCain they weren’t incumbents and most were not front-runners when Palin endorsed them. Her success rate was approximately 70% with record voter turnouts.

They say that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The Obots have been relentlessly attacking Sarah Palin for over two years now, and she keeps getting stronger.

Marc Ambinder should be careful what he wishes for.

All the things that the Obots despise about Sarah Palin are the things the Tea Partiers love. She is one of them. She is a conservative but so are they. The fact that the media hates her is just icing on the cake.

Another problem for the Obots is that they don’t seem to grasp that the whole country doesn’t share their views. When they talk about the “radical” views of Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and the Tea Partiers they don’t realize that those views aren’t really that radical.

Ronald Reagan won two elections espousing the same ideas as the Tea Party movement. Bush I and Bush II won three more doing the same thing. That’s five out of eight elections in the last thirty years. They have a good argument that they’re the mainstream.

Me? I’m a liberal, but I live in the middle of Tea Party country. The headquarters of the Tea Party Express is located about two hours north of me up Highway 99 in Sacramento. I can tell you from personal experience that these people are not stupid, crazy or ignorant. For the most part they aren’t racists either.

But they ARE wrong.

The Republicans have been winning elections for the past thirty years by espousing Randian economic theories, opposing immigration and The Gay and by advocating deregulation of everything except abortion and recreational drugs. The fundies got pissed at them for not delivering on abortion and other social issues and the conservatives (in the form of the Tea Partiers) are pissed because the GOP hasn’t lived up to its libertarian rhetoric of smaller government and laissez faire economics.

Back when Newt Gingrinch was pimping his “Contract on America” I said that the worst thing for the Republicans would be if they won. If they failed to keep their promises they would piss off their supporters but if they did keep them they would piss off the whole country. They won, then made the mistake of tangling with the Big Dawg.

What the Tea Partiers want is what Reagan promised them. The problem is what he promised them won’t work. But instead of making that argument the Democrats plan to run on “Sarah Palin is a c*nt!”

Palin has enough support to win the Republican nomination. She doesn’t have the money, the media or the GOP establishment supporting her, but she’s got something better – voters. More importantly, they’re motivated voters.  The fundies love her because she’s one of them, too.

Now there is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, but if the primaries were starting today she would be formidable. If the candidates she endorsed win in November she’ll be the shiznit. The 2012 campaign starts on November 3, 2010.

Which brings me to my final point, which is why Marc Ambinder is full of shit. Women comprise 52% of the electorate. They have been leaning Democratic for the past few decades but Sarah Palin is building her own “Mama Grizzlies” brand that is based on the idea of conservative feminism.

Watching Obama’s dick army go wild with unhinged misogyny against Hillary alienated lots of women. If you’re reading this you’re probably one of them. Obama hasn’t really done anything to heal that breach, in fact he’s made it worse.

Pete Wilson got himself elected governor of California twice by running on anti-immigration platforms. He also shifted the Hispanic vote solidly into the Democratic column, turning Big Smoggy into a blue state.

If women stay home in November 2012 then Obama will be in deep doo-doo, regardless of who the GOP candidate is. If Sarah Palin is the GOP nominee and women vote Republican she will break the glass ceiling that Hillary cracked.

On the bright side – no populist has ever been elected president.

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin may be the first. What’s really stupid is the Obamacrats want Sarah Palin to be the GOP nominee. They are salivating over the possibility. I said this in a comment thread yesterday:

Whenever I see someone on the left suggesting that they go after Sarah Palin I think about the French military’s strategy in Indochina back in the Fifties. They thought if they could just get Ho Chi Mihn’s boys to stand and fight the war would be over.

They got their wish, at a place called Dien Bien Phu

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(*Original link inoperative, quote via Anglachel’s Journal)