Before heading out to walk the dogs, I finished my wine and lingered long enough to see Sarah Palin endorse Donald Trump. My bad. At least Tina Fey had a good excuse; she was taking SNL notes–although satirizing a parody is quite the challenge. I was just a political junkie with a perverse addiction.
But there she was: dressed to shill in a disco top. There he was: beaming instinctively for the help Palin would presumably provide to woo that fundamentalist, Iowa silo vote that would otherwise be inclined to favor Ted Cruz.
I figured she’d shrilly prattle on for a few minutes and everyone at the Iowa rally would act like she had uttered some patriotic, God-fearing truism, and that would be that.
Well, she shrilly prattled on–resurrecting “you betcha,” “hopey/changey” and more for nostalgic tea partiers–for nearly 20 minutes. She regaled that “media heads were spinnin'” and that the days of America “pussy-footin’ around” were over.
She layered in a little high-decibel rhyme and some alliteration to remind us that she had brought in some kind of speech-writing help for the occasion. Well done, Bristol and Track, the poster kids for right-wing family values.
And I couldn’t help thinking: This is less about a Trump endorsement than it is about the return of the Palin brand. The unintelligibly shrill, manifestly ill-informed veep candidate, failed reality-TV personality and former Fox News performer needed a forum to return to prime time.
That Trump had insulted John McCain, who had unforgivably put her on that 2008 ticket, about his POW status and was now dumping on Cruz, her good friend, didn’t matter. This is show biz, and this was comeback time.
The Palin brand was back. May Trump ultimately pay the price that McCain did.
You betcha.