Mama Grizzly Building Bridges Back To Nowhere

Building Bridges Back To Nowhere

by digby

I've been wondering about this ever since I saw Palin's notorious "hand prompter" speech at the tea party convention, in which her discussion of the terrorist boogeyman was strangely out of place among the faithful. She is a hard core right winger who believes in unlimited military spending just as all hard core modern conservatives do. And yet the Tea Party is fairly dispassionate, so far, on the martial aspect of flag waving, so it seemed at least possible that they might go with the Ron Paul isolationist impulse.

They won't if Palin has anything to do with it:

"Something has to be done urgently to stop the out-of-control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine, and no government agency should be immune from budget scrutiny," she said. "We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of our military. If we lose wars, if we lose the ability to deter adversaries, if we lose the ability to provide security for ourselves and for our allies, we risk losing all that makes America great. That is a price we cannot afford to pay."
Palin also took on Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican, challenging his drive to rein in procurement spending and reevaluate the need for certain huge weapons systems.

"Secretary Gates recently spoke about the future of the U.S. Navy. He said we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers. He went on to ask, 'Do we really need . . . more strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?' " Palin said. "Well, my answer is pretty simple: Yes, we can and yes, we do, because we must."

This ups the ante even more than usual. Mama Griz is saying she doesn't care what the money's spent on, we just need more and more of it. (It's not as if she's a military expert, after all, who's making this statement on the basis of professional assessment of those programs.) This would seem to fly in the face of their small government message, but that's never been a problem before, despite the fact that it's always been contradictory. (Recall the three legged stool: small government, family values, national defense.)

One of her comments during the Q&A that got lost in all the hoopla about her crib notes was this:

The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible because this is the future of our country.

Obviously, the Tea Party is conservative Republican. We've known that from the beginning. But they have been waving the flag for the Revolutionary Army, not the current Military Industrial Complex. Somebody has to make sure these people do not go too far astray from true GOP priorities, which is funneling as much money as possible to the military while keeping taxes low on millionaires and choking off the safety net. They're great on the last two, but Palin, being a woman and a leading tea partier, is a great choice to make the case for national defense and bring them fully on board. A Mama Grizzly is born.

I don't doubt that they will be easily persuaded. They are, after all, in love with the romance of war and guns and all that revolutionary mythology just as much as they loathe the Kenyan usurper and the Unreal Americans who see patriotism somewhat differently. But isolationism is part of that revolutionary mythology too and the Big Boyz have to be careful that this doesn't get out of hand. Sarah Palin is the perfect bridge.

Update: On the other hand you have Coulter offering a way out with her endorsement of the "Obama's War" rationale, which allows the GOP a way out of their political box on Afghanistan. The Grizzly vs the Viper. Who will win?

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