PALIN COUNTRY

What do Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius and Jon Huntsman have in common? 

All were governors who resigned this year to pursue other opportunities, and did so without a peep of criticism from journalists or their fellow pols for "quitting" on the peoples of Arizona, Kansas and Utah, respectively.

I write not to belabor the news media’s double standards with regard to Democrats and Republicans (Ms. Napolitano and Ms. Sebelius are Democrats; Mr. Huntsman is a Republican), or between other politicians and Sarah Palin. 

I want instead to highlight an observation made on Monday (7/06) by Princeton Professor Angelo Codevilla, with whom I was acquainted when we were both staffers in the Senate:

"The distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are being overshadowed by that between what we might call the ‘Court Party’ — made up of the well-connected, the people who feel represented by mainstream politicians who argue over how many trillions should be spent on reforming American society, who see themselves as potters of the great American clay — and the ‘Country Party’ — the many more who are tired of being treated as clay."

Ms. Napolitano, Ms. Sebelius and Mr. Huntsman weren’t criticized for resigning to pursue other opportunities because the other opportunities they’re pursuing are in government, as Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Ambassador to China, respectively.

In the Court Party, the only thing more important than holding public office is seeking a higher one.  Sen. Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) in effect quit his day job (while still drawing his paycheck) for two years in order to seek the presidency. 

Mr. Obama drew little criticism for this, mostly because what he did was so commonplace.  Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John McCain (R-AZ) did much the same thing.

And in the Court Party, the only place to be is at Court.  This is why — until a scandal derailed him — Bill Richardson was planning to resign as New Mexico‘s governor to accept a minor Cabinet post (Secretary of Commerce).

People in the Court Party think it proper they should decide what kind of cars the hoi polloi in flyover country should drive, and how much medical care they may have.

Theirs is an aristocracy not of birth but of connections, connections forged mostly by where they went to school.  Every president after Ronald Reagan (Eureka College, 1932) went to Harvard or Yale.  (George W. Bush had degrees from both.)

For members of the Court Party, where you went to school is more important than what you learned there.  President Obama is said to be brilliant because he went to Columbia, and to Harvard Law School, even though he won’t release his grade transcripts. 

Someone who went to, say, the University of Idaho would be mocked mercilessly for thinking "Austrian" is a foreign language; that Arabic is spoken in Afghanistan; that the United States is one of the largest Moslem countries; that it was American troops who liberated Auschwitz, that there are 57 states in the US, or that Canada has a president.

The divide between the Court Party and the Country Party is illustrated by the political Rorschach test Sarah Palin has become.  As Prof. Codevilla explains:

"America’s ‘Best and Brightest’ — the media’s haughty personages, the college town’s privileged residents, affirmative action’s beneficiaries, the ‘mainstream’ politicians who supported billions for bailouts and ‘stimuli’,’ the upscale folks who look down on the rest of us and upon themselves as saviors of the planet — these are the people who made Palin into a political force by making her a symbol of everything they are not."

Most in the Court Party are Democrats, but there are plenty of Republicans, too, chiefly those who have been in Washington for a very long time.

"If you want to run for president…the forum of a governorship would be a better forum than just being a private citizen," claims Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who’s been in Washington for 28 years, when he was asked about Sarah Palin’s resignation.

"In that phrase, ‘just being a private citizen,’ Sen. Grassley encapsulates both why Sarah Palin is so phenomenally appealing to the Republican base and how divorced the national Republican apparatus is from the core values of party members," wrote Jim Prevor in the Weekly Standard.

"When Sarah Palin leaves behind the administrative tasks of government to fight for what she believes in as a private citizen, she can only be seen as ‘abandoning’ her state and constituents if one believes that only government employees can serve the common good," Mr. Prevor said.

Ms. Palin’s resignation is a crucial "learning moment" for D.C. Republicans, Mr. Prevor continued. 

"The core constituency of the party does not think of themselves as selfish brutes working in the private sector without regard for their country.  This massive base thinks that by paying the taxes and doing the work, starting the businesses and rearing the children, caring for their parents and fighting the wars, they are doing the crucial stuff that sustains our country, protects our freedom and builds our prosperity."

Her enemies and many of her friends were quick to bury Sarah Palin’s political career after her surprise announcement.  But the funeral may be premature.  Tony Blankley, who worked for insurgent politicians Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, noted that "professional politicians and political journalists don’t waste energy on political corpses."

The orgy of media speculation over why Sarah had done what she did, and what she might do next suggest her’s is a very lively corpse.

"As the story was breaking Friday, fellow politically professional panelists (on CNN and ABC) were pointing out on air how stupid Palin was to put forward her big story on a late Friday afternoon during a three day holiday weekend," Mr. Blankley noted. 

"Everyone ‘knows’ one buries a story that way.  It became my grim duty to remind my fellow interlocutors — in case they had not noticed — that all the cable news shows were dropping their programming to switch to wall-to-wall coverage of the Palin announcement, and that we were, at that moment, telling a national audience that the story we were talking about was being buried. 

"The story persisted and expanded over the weekend, and my guess is that if any political topic came up at America‘s millions of Fourth of July backyard barbecue parties, it was probably Sarah Palin.  So who’s the fool?"

The hoi polloi in flyover country are watching as the self-styled best and brightest ruin the economy while feathering their own nests.  If this leads to a revolt at the polls in 2010 or 2012, the Country Party is more likely to look for leadership from the person who best exemplifies their values and expresses their anger than to persons who, by the Court Party’s definition, are more qualified.

"Just as in 2008, when Barack Obama won by adding a few Country Party votes to his liberal ones," Prof. Codevilla concludes, "Sarah Palin could win in 2012 by adding a potentially huge number of Country votes to conservative ones."

And demolish the power of the Republican-Democrat Court Party elite.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.