Identity Politics On The Right

Napoleon Linardatos reads Matthew Continetti’s 4,700 word missive to Sarah Palin so you don't have to:

The sole legitimizing force behind Sarah Palin is the persecution that her supporters perceive that she is subjected to. It’s a movement – if we could call it that – animated by its sense of victimhood. The quantity and ferocity of criticism directed at Palin, right or wrong, is the ultimate arbiter of her worth as a political figure; what she has done, what she promised to do, what she could do, don’t seem to matter.

And so it is with Matthew Continetti’s “The Palin Persuasion”, an essay of more than 4,700 words trying to make the case for Sarah Palin in American politics. It’s extraordinary that in this long essay we don’t have any arguments for Sarah Palin emanating from things that Sarah Palin has done. After more than a year in the national political stage, the dynamism of the Palin phenomenon is entirely dependent on the convulsions it generates in the two extremes of the political spectrum.