Matt Helm on January 23, 2009 at 7:36 AM

+10

I think with the right people around her, helping her to prep for a run in 2012 or 2016, she will prove a formidable opponent.

I don’t understand why those on the left (and a few on the right as well) don’t see why she should hold some appeal for many of us. Her emergence on the national stage was swift, but not unlike Obama’s, really. I thought he gave a fine speech at the 2004 DNC, but if you had asked me then if I thought he would be president four years later, I would have laughed you out the door. Actually, had Gov. Palin not been the nominee but had just been invited to speak like Obama was, I would bet she would be in a truly enviable position now, much as The One was in 2004. There would be lots of buzz around her as the potential future of the party, but without the hysterical fear and attending criticism that has been heaped on her.

It’s easy for me to articulate why she resonates with me: She speaks my language. For one thing she is a woman of my generation, and although I skipped the marriage and kids part, I do think we probably think a lot alike on things. She doesn’t come to us with the obligatory chip on her shoulder that women of the Boomer generation did. She is not one to sit around bemoaning or examining under a microscope her plight as “second-class citizen.” She just goes out there and does what she thinks she needs to do, and does it well. I can identify with that. That’s not to say there aren’t still hurdles that women have to overcome that men necessarily do not. It just means that she doesn’t waste time complaining about the unfairness of it all. She is bringing down barriers through action; she’s writing her own life script instead of letting some victim-oriented movement write it for her. I greatly admire that about her, and I think she sets an exceptional example for her children in that respect. She is fearless in the face of a challenge and that’s the kind of personality I want steering the ship.

Of course the other — and most important — reason she appeals to me is that she represents the kind of libertarian, frontier conservatism that Reagan espoused. That’s something that has been missing in our political discourse for an awfully long time — since the Gipper left office in fact. Her critics may wish to brand her a social conservative, but from what I’ve seen, those views are mostly ones she holds personally and not necessarily what she would impose on the people of her state or country. I’m not by any means a social conservative myself and yet I am pretty comfortable with her record as I know it, and some of the things I’ve heard her say. She doesn’t strike me as someone whose first order of business once taking office would be to radically abridge everyone’s individual liberties, and again, her record supports that. Of course I would expect some shifts in social policy under a Palin adminsitration — for example, I’m pretty sure she would re-impose the executive order that The One just rescinded that would ban federal funding of international pro-abortion groups — but in the grand scheme of things, this is not something that I think severely threatens or curtails the rights of the pro-choice crowd. Liberals just have an unfortunate tendency of making mountains out of molehills.

Anyway, these are the the things that inform my fangirl-ship, and the only reason it happened so quickly is because I didn’t really know who she was before McCain chose her as his running mate. Now I do, and I like her. I don’t necessarily think she’s the only possibility in 2012 or 2016 — I like Mark Sanford quite a bit as well. Jury is still out on Jindal for me, however. But as far as I’m concerned, she’s the front runner. Unless these other guys can show me a reason I should back them over her, I’m squarely in the Palin camp.

NoLeftTurn on January 23, 2009 at 1:12 PM