Sarah Palin's valedictory address as governor of Alaska will (we hope) be little noted nor long remembered. But its denunciation of Hollywood and Washington insiders reflects a perennial obsession by some conservatives that mainstream politicians are too eager to indulge. As Republicans regroup after the disaster of 2008, they would be wise to resist this shrill siren song.
Palin's speech Sunday was an improvement over the stream-of-consciousness performance earlier this month in which she announced that she would be stepping down. Those remarks, which sounded as if they were ghostwritten by love-struck Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, included the Zen-like assertion that she didn't want to take "a quitter's way out." Her official farewell was better focused -- and that's the problem.
Threaded through Palin's encomiums to Alaska and apologias for her self-aborted administration was a thesis familiar to students of this country's culture wars. Unlike those patriotic Alaskans, inhabitants of the Lower 48 number among them a fifth column that in Palin's words is "hell-bent maybe on tearing down our nation." These doomsayers peddle pessimism about the future of the nation and belittle "the great proud volunteers who sacrifice everything for country."
And where does one find these naysayers? In Washington, Hollywood and a clueless mainstream news media. Washington is the home of a "big central government" that plots the "enslavement" of citizens who keep alive a "pioneering spirit." Meanwhile, values cherished by inhabitants of what Palin once called the "real America" -- such as the right to bear arms -- are being undermined by liberals employing "delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets." As for the media, yes, journalists are protected by the 1st Amendment, but they should stop "making things up."
None of these themes originated with Palin. President Nixon celebrated the "silent majority" that supported his conduct of the Vietnam War. Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, attacked journalists as "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "an effete corps of impudent snobs." Ronald Reagan declared that the federal government "is not the solution to our problem, the government is our problem." The architects of George W. Bush's 2004 reelection celebrated his support among so-called values voters who turned out to vote against same-sex marriage.
