Palin's strategy: make Americans proud to be redneck

I just love this blog post by Matt Taibbi. He makes the point that people who support Palin are less interested in issues and more interested in having a politician who is like them, and who glorifies their redneck (and often ignorant) lifestyle.

Here are some choice quotes that pretty much sum up Sarah Palin's recipe for success:

Palin by the way seems to have settled in on a new rhetorical strategy, which is basically to run out one or another version of her “pit bull” line over and over again and not say anything else at all. She’s tuned in to the fact that her audiences literally can’t get enough of having their lunatic self-images massaged ...

Palin has figured out that this is really all you have to do to win elections in this country — flatter middle Americans’ moronic fantasies about themselves. The great thing about flattery is a) you can’t overdo it as hard as you try, and b) it doesn’t pin you down to messy political positions, controversies, things you can be harassed about by Chris Matthews and other press weasels. It’s basically a risk-free strategy. You get up on stage and you basically say, “I’m just like all you idiots. And you idiots rock!” People will actually fall for this stuff.

Sure, she’ll talk about immigration, or health care, or gun rights, but all that boring stuff is really secondary to the more important business of reassuring her audiences that that it’s okay to be a slob who does nothing but shoot cute animals and watch TV.

She one-ups even George Bush in this respect. .... Bush couldn’t have spent more than ten minutes in some dirty trailer in Arkansas before signaling for the helicopter. The guy was just too used to being around rich people, nice houses, cigarette boats full of sheiks and oil executives, etc. Sarah Palin on the other hand really is the kind of person who you can picture eating egg salad off a ping-pong table. That and her utterly genuine stupidity and meanness can take her a long way — all by themselves, I think these things can win the White House for her — and it seems like she senses this on some animal/reptilian level. Hence the renewed emphasis on jacking off her audiences of late.

Palin, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, delivered calls to action to an audience dominated by women. "The mama grizzlies, they rise up," she said, to laughter. "You thought pit bulls are tough. You don't want to mess with the mama grizzlies. And I think there are a whole lot of those in this room." [audience goes nuts]

Perfect TeaBagger strategy!