In the Wall Street Journal liberal columnist Thomas Frank is sneering at Sarah Palin's victim strategy--as if the Clintons didn't take it to the bank in the 1990s and in 2008.
But meanwhile Sarah Palin has emerged from resigning as Alaska Governor with an op-ed in the Washington Post. You could say that this action says, as clearly as possible: I'm still in the game!
Now if you were a politician aspiring to bigger things, to the leadership of your party and even the presidency, what would you do first? You don't yet have a full-strength organization staffed up with policy experts. But you are expert in certain issue areas.
It's a no-brainer. You write an op-ed attacking the president's energy policy. It allows you to play to your strength, as a practical reformer from an energy state. And it allows you to attack the president's big-tax, big-government policy.
So that's what Sarah Palin did. She wrote an article which demonstrated her competence in energy policy. And she got off a zinger to rile up the troops.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
Nothing like a little red meat for the base. But it will probably be a constant theme in Palin's rhetoric. For our liberal friends running the Obama administration have shown that as far as they are concerned the supply-side notion, that marginal tax-rates are important, is nothing but "voodoo economics."
But really, Sarah Palin is right. The only way that liberals will come to believe in supply-side economics is the day that it hits them upside the head.
Palin is also right to follow the Reagan strategy. In the years after the 1976 election Reagan cranked out endless radio commentaries and traveled the nation speaking to Republicans. With her first op-ed, it is clear that she has a similar strategy in mind.
Will it do the trick? Who knows. But one thing going for her is that the relentless scorn from our liberal friends will play well with moderate women around election time.
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