Palin's Tea Party Rally speech...and a warning

I don't know about anyone else, but to me, Sarah Palin's speech at the Tea Party Rally today sure made it seem as if she is going to be a presidential candidate before too long.  It was a great speech, taking aim at the "permanent political class" on both sides of the aisle (because we all know that neither side has a monopoly on people whose first priority is to stay in power), and it laid out a great plan for helping to move America forward.  (That sounds like a good name for an organization...one that I didn't actually remember until I typed those words, but still...)

The full speech (with thanks to The Right Scoop and Conservatives 4 Palin for pointing me in the right direction) can be found right here.  It's just over 40 minutes, but well worth watching.



I'd include some of the best quotes from the speech, but, as usual, Jedediah Bila has beaten me to it.  A sampling of her picks are as follows:

“What brought us together is a love of country and we see that America is hurting. We’re not willing to just sit back and watch her demise through some fundamental transformation … we’re here to begin the restoration of the country that we love. We’re here because America is at a tipping point.”

“Politicians are so focused on the symptoms and not the disease … so this is why we must remember that the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012, but the challenge is who or what we will replace him with.”

“My plan is a bona-fide pro-working man’s plan and it deals in reality … My plan is about empowerment, empowerment of our states, empowerment of our entrepreneurs … empowerment of you, our hard-working individuals.

“Real hope is in you. It’s not that hopey-changey stuff that we heard about in 2008 … Real hope comes from realizing that ‘we the people’ can make the difference.”

I ended with that last quote on purpose.  What Ms. Bila snipped from that quote was the sentence just before, which stated that real hope should not be in any one person (at least in the political word...my hope is indeed in one Person, which is good because I'm a bit of a screw-up on my own).  I warned years ago about people forming a cult of personality around President Obama or Governor Palin.  As I said then, the policies are the important thing, not the person.  And, as we've seen (and as I recently pointed out), the true believers react very negatively when their object is belittled in any way.  That isn't standing up for a policy, that's standing up for a person.

But with that said, there now seems to be an Anti-Palin cult of personality as well (or would that be a cult of anti-personality?), in which the members react negatively when their object is praised.  (Yes, there's one of those for President Obama as well...you've seen it, I'm sure.)

So my advice (which I am mostly offering to myself, since I'll forget this within 48 hours, most likely) is not to be a member in such a cult, and not to engage someone who is obviously a member of an anti-cult.  Let them stew in their overly intense emotions, and you work toward bringing about the change you want to see in this country.  If someone running for anything shares your views (as, for example, Sarah Palin seems to share mine), then work with them.  But don't focus on a person too much, to the detriment of the country.