Sarah this, Sarah that.

Sarah Schmarah.

The question is really this:

If, because of a long, "jobless recovery", a large number of America's 350,000,000 people would enjoy listening to a demagogue, then finding a very effective one among 350,000,000 people won't be all that difficult.

Is it Sarah?

Well, at the moment she is the most known and commented contender.

Is she "too dumb" to succeed?

Being a successful demagogue really doesn't take that much of a "brain", it takes a talent mostly.

Palin's convention speech showed that she had that talent.

Examining the "brain" thing in demagogues:

Remember that the most successful demagogue of all time, Adolph Hitler, was dumb enough to declare war on the USA, when he was already at war with the Soviet Union. They don't come any dumber than that.

However, so that there be no confusion, unlike many of history's demagogues Sarah Palin is certainly not an antisemite, in fact, she is a staunch friend of Israel.

This from the Washington Times:

Sarah Palin displays an Israeli flag in her governor's office in Juneau, even though she has never been to the country, and attends Protestant evangelical churches that consider the preservation of the state of Israel a biblical imperative.

Her faith makes her a favorite with the staunchly pro-Israel neoconservative elements in the Republican Party.

A couple of general rules of thumb when considering demagogues:

1.) The people who follow demagogues aren't interested in thinking, they are interested in feeling: demagoguery is a form of political pornography: up and on, who cares about the "plot"?

2.) The rational people who use demagogues do plenty of thinking, in fact, they don't want anybody else to think very much at all.

That is the whole point of demagoguery, to eliminate rational thought.

That is the whole point of fascism for that matter, to replace objective, individual thought with mass emotion.

The question remains: is there a market right now or in the foreseeable future for someone like this?

That is the real problem, not, for the moment, a lady named Sarah Palin.

Several commentators, notably David Brooks, have been comparing Sarah Palin to Richard Nixon. Here is Brooks:

No one thought Richard Nixon -- a far less personable commodity than Palin -- would come back either after his sour-grapes "last press conference" of 1962. But Democratic divisions and failures gave him his opportunity in 1968. With unemployment approaching 10 percent and a seemingly bottomless war in Afghanistan, you never know, as Palin likes to say, what doors might open.

From the point of view of those who sympathize with neither Nixon or Palin, what should worry us about Palin is her natural charisma. Nixon had none. Nixon had to work harder and hustle more than anyone to get where he got, everything about him was forced, sweaty jowled and unnatural. Palin on the contrary irradiates whatever it is that makes (some, a lot of) people like or identify with her.

That we don't like her is nothing for her to worry about. That, despite the Republican establishment's disparagement, Palin's base still supports her gives the GOP a lot to worry about and should probably trouble the rest of us too.

I think that Sarah Palin is frightening many Republican "realist" (read pro-business) commentators because they realize that she is a monster that the party has been creating since Nixon's "Southern Strategy". The fiscal conservatives have been using the social conservatives and the just generally resentful and racist elements as cannon fodder to win elections and now they finally see what Nixon hath wrought.

The Republican rage against her is because they see that they have fallen into a trap of their own construction: the party of the rich, which catered to the yokels is now in danger of being taken over by the yokels... which could be catastrophic for American business interests all over the world.

Certainly continuing high unemployment with no relief on the horizon is the recipe for populism. Since left wing populism is out of the question in America, then it would have to be right-wing populism. Palin would be a perfect poster girl for such a movement.

The rise of socially conservative populism would be a joker in the deck that could derail globalization and interrupt the pantomime of American politics. The idea sounds fun, but the reality could be pretty terrible.

I wouldn't take the trouble to post this if it weren't for the fierce defense TPMers made of Josh when Maureen Dowd ripped him off.

TPM has a huge readership and I get the feeling that MSM commentators "mine" us for ideas sometimes.

Has David Brooks done this to me in the New York Times?

You be the judges.

My piece was posted here on the seventh of July. It did pretty well with 25 recommends and 98 comments.

Here are some samples.

First,(age before beauty) me:

(Urban-based commentators are "misunderestimating" this woman, for in reality the reaction she produces in them is the mirror image of the the reaction she produces in the masses of people these commentators by turns patronize or despise.

Whoever Sarah Palin may really be, she functions powerfully as a type. What, for deracinated urbanites, constitutes prima facie evidence of trailer trashdom, resonates as identity for the struggling members of America's discouraged and marginalized warrior caste, the rural-rooted scotch-irish and their various semi-urban sept clans. Although it in politically incorrect to notice it, they too are a hyphenated, disadvantaged, ethnic group.

Now Brook's turn at bat:

Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops. The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter's flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she's riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that's larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

I ended my July seventh post on this note:

Despite the talk of "green shoots", we are facing a jobless recovery that stretches far into the future and this is already causing notable unrest in Sarah Palin's natural constituency. Who knows who a jobless America might be willing to vote for in 2012?

Brooks says:

Were Palin actually to secure the 2012 nomination, the result would be a fiasco for the G.O.P. akin to Goldwater 1964, as the most relentless conservative Palin critic, David Frum, has predicted. Or would it? No one thought Richard Nixon -- a far less personable commodity than Palin -- would come back either after his sour-grapes "last press conference" of 1962. But Democratic divisions and failures gave him his opportunity in 1968. With unemployment approaching 10 percent and a seemingly bottomless war in Afghanistan, you never know, as Palin likes to say, what doors might open.

On Friday I closed with:

The United States is getting ripe for someone just like Sarah Palin, a perky, "down to earth", George Wallace with large breasts.

Today Brooks writes:

These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised -- by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers' hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

As far as I can see the biggest difference is that I'm not getting paid by the word here.

I suppose that if Brooks did "borrow" from me I should take it as a compliment, imitation being the highest form of flattery, or if we just were thinking the same things at the same time, then I should pat myself on the back for being in tune with such a top commentator.

Anyhow, I'll let you all be the judge of this.
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