Andrew Sullivan watched Sarah Palin’s speech to the tea party convention tonight and came away scared:
Above all, she is capable of generating a personality cult — much, much more so than Obama, because she can harness Christianism to her divine destiny. The power of this kind of appeal — of a charismatic, beautiful woman, an icon of the pro-life cause, persecuted by the evil elites, demonized by libruls, and commanding the biggest military on earth — should not in my view be under-estimated.
I totally get this. On the other hand, here’s the New York Times:
The convention had gathered here to try to turn the activism of the Tea Party rallies over the last year into actual political power. Her speech was the keynote event of the convention, and the big draw for many of the 600 people who had paid $549 to attend — another 500, organizers said, paid $349 just to see for her speech alone.
Granted, that’s a fair chunk of change for the average tea partier. Still, only about a thousand people were willing to pay it, and a thousand people is really not a huge number. Palin obviously has an impressive gut feel for the politics of resentment, but over time I think her Fox News gig is going to have the same effect that running for vice president did: it’s going to make her less popular. As she makes the inevitable transition from fascinating pop icon to dreary regular commentator with nothing original to say, her star is going to wane.
Plus there’s the apparent fact that she writes notes on her hand to remind her of things to say. Or so it seems. You be the judge about 45 seconds into this clip. (Alternative explanation: There was nothing on her hand. Looking down was a deliberate stunt designed to start lefty tongues wagging, thus providing her with yet another example of how liberal elites are so threatened by her that they have to invent ridiculous sneers every time she so much as moves her head a few inches. But does she have the animal cunning to plan something like that? Your call.)
