Sarah Palin's Attacks the GOP Establishment

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stirred the pot again in the GOP presidential campaign.

Using her Facebook account Friday she blast "the Republican establishment" for using "Alinsky tactics" against her favored candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. 

I'll leave it to Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic to critique the historical inaccuracies in Palin's rant; he also provides an intriguing but non-scientific sampling of the blowback from Palin's followers in the tea party. I'm more interested in two of Palin's bigger points, one of which is disingenuous, the other right on the money.

Taking the latter first, Palin rightly calls out the media for promoting what is a powerfully pro-Mitt Romney meme, namely, that the former Massachusetts governor can sew up the nomination just by winning (fill in the blank). I'll confess to engaging in some of this kind of punditry myself. It may be a realistic assessment of historical patterns, but it ignores the gyrations in this year's primaries. Those gyrations stem from many voters' deep-seated misgivings about putative front-runner Romney, their lack of familiarity with most of the candidates in the race and the differing priorities held by social conservatives, tea partyers and Main Street Republicans.

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