Palin's Lemonade Stand

It seems our lefty friends didn't like Gov. Palin's speech in Nashville, TN, last Saturday. But it wasn't the content, or even her hair, that caught most of the interest. It was her hand.

Maddened into a frenzy by the TOTUS meme, our lefty friends made a lot of unprintable comments related to the notes that Gov. Palin had scribbled on her hand.

As usual, Palin has turned lemon into lemonade by making a point of waving her notecard hand at her personal appearances. That's what a skilled politician does, by instinct. In fact that's how you can tell a skilled politician.

Meanwhile, Jonathan V. Last at the Weekly Standard looks at the Obama numbers and tells us what is happening to the president's support. The weaker parts of his winning coalition are leaving the sinking ship.

Back in 2008 Obama's core support was upscale professionals, blacks, and young voters. The "Jacksonian" voters (i.e., Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen that first turned out for Andrew Jackson 190 years ago!) and white ethnics were slow to rally to Obama's standard. It is the Jacksonians and the white ethnics who are falling away now. They are falling away from the president and maybe falling away from the Democratic Party.

Hmm. Now who do you think would really appeal to those folks? Who do you think could make them feel that he really understands them?

Exactly, Senator. That "he" is a "she."

The McGovern wing of the Democratic Party has always had a problem with the white ethnics that once were the core of the party. On defense, on race, on the regulatory state, on sex, the McGovern Democrats are poles apart from the white ethnics. Up until Obama the post Vietnam Democratic presidents have been moderate Southerners. So the antipathy between urban liberals and the white ethnics was blurred.

But President Obama is a full-on McGovern Democrat. And the old-line white ethnic voter is finding out that the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party just doesn't understand and doesn't appreciate them.

The truth is that the rise of the Republican Party since the nadir of 1964 has never been about the brilliance of Republican Party politicians and ideas. The story has always been that, about once each decade, the elite liberals toss out another member of the old New Deal coalition. And the only place for the homeless faction is the Republican Party.

But now something is different. Now the Republican Party has a headline politician who could be picked by Central Casting to appeal to the disaffected Jacksonian and white ethnic Democrats.

Her name is Sarah Palin.