Snark, Baby, Snark!
As one speaker followed the next to the podium, the platitudes came fast and furious. Even by C-SPAN standards, this had all the makings of a snooze-fest. Then Sarah Palin took her turn at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference and it was lights out.
I'll leave it to the sociologists among you to figure out why she's catnip - both to the right and the left - but Chris Cillizza has a provocative post today dissecting Palin's use of sarcasm as a rhetorical device and it's well worth a read.
What Palin's speech -- and the reception it enjoyed in the room -- was that in a certain segment of the Republican base she is absolutely revered. Her sarcasm played deftly to the outrage/anger that many people at SRLC clearly felt and the reviews in the room were over-the-top supportive of Palin. But, the sarcasm-laden speech also seemed to typify the fact that Palin is more comfortable playing to those who already love her rather than to reaching out to those who take a more skeptical stance."
Here's the disconnect between Palin's public persona and what everybody says she wants from political life. Cillizza correctly notes that sarcasm rarely plays well in American politics, especially at a period in U.S. history where independent voters often swing elections. At this point, though, Palin seems more inclined to take the Ann Coulter-Laura Ingraham route to fame and influence than to try and win over middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans. (She reads her poll numbers and they are not good, touching historic lows, even among Republicans.)
Palin believes her vice-presidential campaign, like her conservative agenda generally, was screwed over by the Beltway crowd. She also knows that such rhetoric touches her audience's anti-elite trigger points. But Palin's sarcasm often joins up with a less desultory sentiment: personal victimhood. She was wronged, and her post-election political rebirth on the public speaking circuit, with all the adulation of the crowds that's come with it, seems to be, above all, about getting revenge.
That wouldn't be altogether shocking, though settling scores is one thing; winning elections is something else. For now, it seems that Palin wants to pursue the former while also making a few shekels on the side.
(Here's a spliced YouTube clip of some of her zingers from the conference:)