Sarah Palin As Pat Buchanan In Drag

Here, we see Sarah Palin thinking, "Darn! I've gotta get another picture taken."

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift is asking, "Are Sarah Palin's 'Mama Grizzlys' Feminists?"

... It’s nice [Mama Grizzlies are] embracing feminism after demonizing the term for so long, and I welcome them to the arena. Let’s see if they can do for women what their sisters on the left have done since the ’70s, breaking down the barriers for women in all areas of American life including politics. Palin has George W. Bush’s disdain for intellectual elites, and she lives the rhetoric. She’s undisciplined intellectually, but she’s got street smarts, and they count. ...

... The women candidates she considers Mama Grizzlies would have been out there anyway; I don’t think she inspired them to run. But she’s given definition to a movement that would otherwise be just a bunch of kooks, or one-offs. She’s fenced off a wing of the GOP that she owns, and in politics, when it’s your turn to ride the rocket, that’s what you do. A Republican source says Palin is nothing new, she’s really Pat Buchanan in drag—the same issues except that her reality show is a lot more gripping. The media went overboard for Buchanan in 1996 when he won the New Hampshire primary, defeating establishment favorite Bob Dole. But the insurgent campaign of a former Nixon speechwriter can’t compare with the ongoing soap opera of the Palins. Bristol and Levi together again!

When I ran the Palin-as-Buchanan theory past another Republican, a woman this time, she said that was an insult to Buchanan, who is deeply serious and has thought about these issues. She doesn’t agree with his conclusions, but he rode the rocket at a moment in time, just as Palin is poised to do. This friend does corporate focus groups that have nothing to do with politics, and at the end she likes to ask what the participants think of various people in the news: “When you mention her name, they all smile, even if what comes out of their mouth is that she’s terrible.”

A big part of Palin’s appeal is how well she works with today’s culture, which is shallow and quick. Twitter is 140 characters—which gets me back to the serious do-gooders who worry about girls in Afghanistan. They don’t have the same ability to get to the heart of things, plus they’re dealing with issues most voters would rather avoid, and that includes Palin, who quit public office when it got harder than tweeting.


In "Feminism is Alive and Well ... Even Sarah Palin Wants to Be One," Gloria Steinem says, " ... yes, you can be a feminist who doesn’t agree with abortion, who would never have an abortion. But you can’t be a feminist who says that other women can’t and criminalizes abortion." That would seem to disqualify Palin, who, although she claims to have considered her own options as any ordinary pro-choice woman might, while she was pregnant with Trig, doesn't trust other women with that choice.

Clift says Sharron Angle isn't pro-choice. What about the other candidates Palin has endorsed? Are any of 'em feminists?

Are 'Mama Grizzlys' a big deal?