Eva Palin?

I have watched Sarah Palin’s interviews with Oprah, Barbara Walters, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. Here's what we are dealing with. The media are right to try to destroy Palin. No one interested in overthrowing the established order (including its media arm) in 2010 will find a more compelling vehicle than Sarah Palin.

The celebrity-driven, politics-ignoring culture that grips America’s non-college graduate majority have in Palin a person with whom they can identify. Beautiful, the rock star they want. Down-to-earth, just as they want. Blunt, honest, outspoken, yet friendly and self-deprecating, exactly as they want their leader. Most of all, fed up with everything that represents failed elitism, as are they.

Sarah Palin could be our next president. She is, what Obama is not though seemed for a moment to be, the real thing. The country is ready to dump George W. Obama big government/big business, especially Wall Street. The masses are populist, longing for a populist leader. They want a celebrity, a superstar who lifts them out of their ordinary lives, someone in whom they can believe.

They want Eva Palin.

O’Reilly asked Palin how she felt about people comparing her to Eva Peron. Palin demurred, as she normally does when paid a complement. In other words, Palin is flattered to be linked to the corrupt, power hungry, but beloved by the Argentine “shirtless ones”—Evita.

So what’s next?

1. Palin will keep gaining if the media keep hammering her. Blunt attacks will backfire. (Both Oprah and Barbara seemed to understand this, engaging Palin with fairly gentle questioning.)

2. Palin will do best if she talks mostly about the economy, especially job creation. That means, as she says, helping small businesses, not raising their taxes. Palin can also continue advocating for free trade, while telling China to rebalance its currency in favor of increased imports.

3. However much of a “rogue” Palin is, she’s unlikely to run as a third party candidate. She will be Republican because Republicans are increasingly drawn to populism that rejects both big government and big business. Also, business itself will lean toward Palin populism as preferable to Democrats and big government. Palin won’t need a third party. If she plays her cards right, the Republican Party is hers.