...what's that mean? Matt Labash, a writer at The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine whose editor, William Kristol, kick-started Sarah Palin's national career, pilloried the Alaskan demagogue's new TLC show. A sampling:
Palin intones in the show's opening, “A-LASK-ahhhh—I love this state like I love my family.” Except that she didn't give her family up after governing it for two-and-a-half years, so that she could get a Fox News contract, and make 100 grand per speech, and write two books in a year, and drag her entire family onto a tacky reality show.
So the magazine that catalyzed Palin's career is now floating a critical trial balloon? Labash, by trade a provocateur rather than an establishment conservative, may not represent the institution's consensus, but this may also be a sign of efforts among the GOP to rein in Palin, whose benefits among conservative voters may not exceed the costs among the rest of the electorate.
Or perhaps there are wheels within wheels. Matt Duss e-mails with a different analogy, likening Palin's relationship to the GOP establishment to a different group of conservatives. "In the sense that the Kristol-Palin relationship is one of strategic depth (for Kristol), I see this as kind of like [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei] authorizing one of his deputies to scold Hamas for its too-strident nationalism." I guess it's tough for the leadership of any ossified conservative movement to balance their relationship with allied populist resistance movements.
-- Tim Fernholz
