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To Palin Supporters
Sarah’s Future Looks Bright
By Abby Scher
Public Eye Extra! July 6, 2009

Abby Scher is editor of Public Eye, the quarterly about the Right published by the think tank Political Research Associates.

Sarah Palin’s true blue supporters haven’t won a lot of attention in the post-mortem after she gave up the Alaska governorship – or as she put it, her “title.” But Sarah’s political career is no beauty pageant to the thousands who organize themselves through Team Sarah, the web community “dedicated to advancing the values that Sarah Palin represents in the political process.”

If Alaskans seem fed up with their soon-to-be ex-governor, Palin’s web constituents are a lot more forgiving. She is not abandoning them and her rambling, sometimes incoherent statement had inspiring moments that fed into many of her followers’ populist, antigovernment sentiments, and “family values” politics. Those wondering why Palin is so important need look no further than Team Sarah’s own post-mortem. Palin drew “in massive numbers of Americans new to the political process,” said Team Sarah founder Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement. She is a “new political role model” who took “vast numbers of Americans to a new place: politics without cynicism.”

That Palin was a conservative Christian woman who balanced home and the governorship showed that you didn’t have to be a liberal feminist – and liberal Christian – like Hillary Clinton to achieve national prominence while having children. The young people I interviewed before and after the election were inspired that you could have an active public life while raising a family, and even wanted their moms, not just their generation, to follow suit.

So checking in with Team Sarah after Palin’s resignation, I wondered whether its members would find her tarnished in admitting defeat. If she and her family couldn’t take the pressure, how can she be a role model?

Aside from a few who worried that she’ll be seen as a quitter or who were suspending judgment until they heard more, people were supportive of a Sarah who will now be “free to speak out,” who is a “breath of fresh air” against Washington corruption, and who is “a current day Patrick Henry” who should start her own political party. From a populist point of view, she continues to be the outsider challenging the political elites, and in fact is even better positioned to take up that banner. It’s a mistake to evaluate her future solely on whether she can win the Republican presidential nod and not whether she will contribute to the Right as a movement. As mainstream Republicans offer little except calls to cut taxes and to oppose whatever Obama wants, it seems Palin still feels fresh and continue to speak to a patriotic base thirsting for a marquee figure.

Interestingly, while Team Sarah was launched by the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports woman candidates who oppose abortion rights, this was not a moment for people to reflect on her prolife politics, although they echoed her in complaining that the mainstream media supposedly attacked baby Trig.

Instead, they wrote about traditional rightwing populist themes that Palin herself sounded. She challenged the corrupt insiders and cynical media – the elite – who sought to tear her down, while vowing to defend “free enterprise and smaller government and strong national security for our country and support for our troops and energy independence and for those who will protect freedom and equality and life.”

For supporter Janet Dobbs, a Sarah outside of government is a Sarah who is free to speak out on “the issues which are drastically changing the landscape of the America we know and love: the trillions in deficit spending, government overtaking our corporations and financial institutions, and lack of respect for upholding our Constitution by Congress,” as she wrote in a post on Team Sarah. An Australian poster prompted a whole chain of “you go girls” in painting Palin as a victim of the liberal elite, and Obama as “a manipulated puppet of George Soros and the Left.”

“The elite despises Sarah Palin. They ridicule the common American who believes in good old fashioned sense,” wrote still another supporter.

“The leftwing is afraid of a committed Christian woman President,” wrote a third.

In their vigorous defense of Palin, Team Sarah members did not just target the “left” and mainstream media who they believe fear her power. Her supporters challenge “the good ole boy club” of the GOP after Republican commentators dismissed Sarah as a “has been.”

Team Sarah reports winning new members in the weekend after Palin’s announcement, and more than 1900 posts swarmed the site as people reflected on its meaning. “I really don’t want to disappoint anyone with this announcement, not with the decision that I have made,” said Palin. Listening to the core of her base, she can rest assured that they won’t be. And by leaving government, she might find herself more and more in the embrace of a conventional politics outside of elected office – a populist, rightwing one. Ironically, that will make her golden again during the midterm elections, as candidates of a party reaching to the right eagerly invite her to campaign for them.

So the circle turns. Despite what Team Sarah supporters say, GOP good ole boys overseeing an unpopular and very male party want Palin’s star power on the campaign trail. She will continue to be part of a Right that is consolidating into a hardcore antigovernment force to be reckoned with, though perhaps not at the ballot box.

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