Like Glenn Beck she serves as a focal point for right wing anger. Why are we out power? Because they, our own party's intellectual elites, abandoned us. They turned their backs on the real spine of the party. They cost us by not being Republican enough and by Republican we mean the real red state variety of gun lovers and heterosexual marry-ers.

Remember when HW Bush lost to Clinton? The Republicans blamed HW for not being Republican enough. He raised taxes, they said, and created an opening for Ross Perot and Clinton stole the election. You see the same thing now. They say that W "wasn't a conservative -- why just look at all the government spending he did!"

A Palin or a Beck could never win a national election because, in their role as rilers of the base they have to say crazy things. But they can make a lot of money and do a lot of damage from the fringe and that's all that matters.

But we shouldn't dismiss populists from either the right or the left. Trust is, both parties do have elites who often ignore the masses. Witness what Democrats have done with health care reform which has largely been in direct defiance of the party's base. Or witness how the Democratic establishment failed to stand up to Joe Lieberman when he ran for office after losing his party's primary.

The two parties definitely create the conditions for populists on both sides to flourish. That they will always be too radical to win elections doesn't hurt them any, their adherents take that fact as confirmation of what they already believe: that the establishment will never allow anyone who speaks for them to get into a position of power anyway.