Sarah Palin takes the initiative

By Bernie Quigley - 08/22/12 08:23 AM ET

It was an error for the Republicans to bring in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as the key speaker at their convention. While all of the excitement and adventure in politics in the last three years has been among conservatives, Christie is the great, faithless bet against conservatives’ future and a futile attempt to institutionalize the past. At CPAC events these last three years, up to 40 percent of young conservatives yearned for Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano; STATES’ RIGHTS, SOUND MONEY AND CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. The other 60 percent — the National Review crowd, the neocons, the Bush apparatus, the entire Eastern Conservative Establishment — could think only of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Christie is their front man, as animated and clownish as a carny barker at the Dixie Classic. Going into the future, conservatives hold all the cards. But they chose the past. Obviously, they should have chosen former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their lead speaker.

Sarah Palin told Greta Van Susteren on Fox last night that she would support a third-party run in Missouri. Not by accident this announcement comes as the Republican convention opens in Tampa, Fla. Like Romney, she misses nothing. Since Palin — and she was the first — came to the aid of Doug Hoffman in NY-23 in 2009, there has been a positive division in conservatism, which will grow and mature in our century. She is the natural leader of this new direction. In time we will see current economic liberalism disappear entirely. It lost its essential economic purpose when large-scale manufacturing left America and America became a place of smaller businesses. It left Democrats with only the most ephemeral lifestyle and cultural issues.

This shift in economy brings a maturity of economic purpose and is a historic shift. If the last century and a half was represented as a proxy fight between Marx and Keynes, the next in America will be between Keynes and Hayek. Two or three years ago at the CPAC events, the Hayek direction — Ron Paul, Judge Napolitano, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Sarah Palin — took the initiative. Chris Christie’s trickster dance in Tampa will not send it away. If Obama wins this year, Palin will lead (against Christie/Bush) in the Republican primary in 2016. If Romney wins and yields to the tradition (which he will because his life is stuck in 1972) Palin will bring a challenge.

Key here is we are at a generational shift as large and vital as that of the ’60s, but it is a conservative shift. They just didn’t get the memo yet in Tampa.