Palin in Iowa: Sexy Sadie What Have You Done?

Tonight's RPI Reagan Dinner gave further and compelling evidence of Sarah Palin's now undeniable celebrity star power.  The event drew 1500 or so guests.  The typical RPI event, with Newt, with Mitt, even with Huck, draws about 200 paid guests and 200 comped operatives.  Every single aspect of the event was the same as every other RPI event: the venue, the format, the open lack of hospitality, the Ronald Reagan video (albeit with a new twist that somehow linked President Reagan with Warren G. Harding) even the ecumenically insensitive choice of entree`, roast pork on Rosh Hashanah.  The only difference tonight was provided by the nuclear illumination of the taxpayer's revolution and its most powerful messenger.  

As with the 2008 Republican National Convention, Sarah again expressed the 18th Century concepts of democracy and freedom in the language of the 21st Century.  While sitting in the crowd, however, my mind drifted toward the lyrics of the 20th Century's greatest lyricist, John Lennon.  In 1968, the Walrus (who was not Paul) penned the words:


Oh, Sexy Sadie what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
Sexy Sadie ooh what have you done.


Sexy Sadie you broke the rules
You laid it down for all to see
You laid it down for all to see
Sexy Sadie oooh you broke the rules.


Much of the Mama Grizzly's speech was directed at motivating the small, constitutionally limited government "Tea Party" conservative wing of the GOP-and they were motivated.  The Con-Con crowd left the hall in a state of exuberance.  
 
The small government conservatives, most of whom have been purged from Iowa party involvement and the remaining co-opted or bullied, were ecstatic and left Hy-Vee Hall displaying more motivation than seen in these precincts since the halcyon days of W and 99.  More than a few such "fringers" were heard discussing their planned greater involvement in the Party.  Unfortunately it was not the Republican Party they mentioned-it was the Tea Party. 
 
Lennon's irony became irresistible because the very party "machine" that Sarah ridiculed provided the forum for their own ridicule-like the Bourbon monarchy summoning the Estates General in 1786.  The more Sarah hammered the Republican establishment the more the corporatists, whose concept of politics is far more Rove that Reagan, displayed unease as Palin's call for revolution within the Republican Party became unmistakable.  Revolution is never a good thing when one has held the reins of power for forty six years.
 
Sarah's advance team probably did not know that the party establishment provided a greater forum for a defeated Congressional primary candidate of its choosing, (Jim Gibbons) than it did the primary winner (Brad Zaun), and a winner who has the best chance to capture a Congressional seat we have not held in a decade at that.  Nor did they know that the top of the ticket probably failed to carry the night's crowd in last June's primary.  Palin's willingness to stick to her small government Con-Con message in the face of the archetypal establishment displays a candidate who, unlike the GOP establishment, is leading to win and not winning to lead.  Perhaps such integrity provides the source of Sarah's celebrity.
 
Last fall RPI brought in Haley Barbour to bully and insult the Con-Cons.  This spring the messenger injected enthusiasm into a new wave of political action and actors.  History is turning a page and a powerful and charismatic woman holds the book. 
 
That book, to again quote John Lennon, begins with the words "Power to the People, Power to the people right on.