Sarah Palin recently ended her book tour back in her home state of Alaska. One can debate her pros and cons ad infinitum but when Entertainment Tonight covers your book tour, it says you are a formidable political figure.  In an era of celebrity worship almost no one the GOP has her kind of star power like it or not. Can you imagine ET covering a Mitt Romney book tour? Tim Pawlenty? Me neither.

I  wrote Division Bell for TAC to better define the division within the Right political power structure as being between the institutional establishment and that representing Conservative INC. As soon as Palin was chosen for the GOP ticket in 2008 and was sucked up in the Conservative INC. vortex (away from her original  Buchananite/Paul roots) she balanced the ticket as the No. 2 to a member of the institutional establishment.

McCain the Maverick a member of the establishment? Well his being the son and grandson of admirals and married to a beer baroness, I’d say so. His legendary coziness with the establishment media, particularly in Washington, also makes this so.  McCain’s adversarial independence was largely directed at Conservative INC., not at the GOP as an institution of which he is a loyal member, Democrat fantasies about being John Kerry’s running mate notwithstanding. For example, McCain supported the Kosovo bombing of 1999 not because the Republicans as a party took an official stand against it (they didn’t), but because Conservative INC., in its hatred of all things Clinton, was against it. McCain-Feingold was largely directed at all the interest groups that make up Conservative INC. And McCain no doubt feels Conservative INC.’s activists in South Carolina, working in tandem with the Bush II campaign, sunk his 2000 candidacy there with below-the-belt campaign tactics that were below-the-radar.  I disagree that the conservative and right hatred of McCain is irrational. It is, in fact, mutual and it’s based on any number of serious factors like immigration or campaign finance reform outside of personalities or perceptions, although those factor in as well. Both sides  simply do not like each other. And if  former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth follows through on a primary challenge to McCain this year, then you’ll see Conservative INC. and McCain duke it out again.

The activists still ask how McCain was even nominated in 2008 despite the fact his campaign was in such bad shape several months before the first primaries and caucuses? Because he won for the same reason messrs. Bush I, Dole and Bush II won: divide and conquer. Because so many on the Right for so long have believed that if they only just unite all the “conservatives” around them they would win the prize, it has encouraged many people to run for President who have little or no chance of success. So they run and they chop up the Right vote into itsy-bitsy little pieces in the crucial early primaries and caucuses where the nomination is decided and the candidate of the institutional establishment goes on to win.

Besides, GOP nominations are not decided at CPAC conferences of activists and their straw polls. They are are decided by average, ordinary Main St. and subdivision fellows and blue-haired matriarchs who have no idea what a neocon is or what the difference between a neocon or paleocon is. And they vote for whomever they feels is the best candidate to take on the Democrats in the fall, not which faction or what subgroup they belong to. In this, they saw McCain as someone not tainted with any associations with discredited Bush II Administration, someone with the reputation of being a reformer in Congress, (especially when it came on spending) and someone with a military background who could presumably lead the  war effort successfully. And in a party that prizes loyalty, obedience and patience, McCain loyally “waited his turn” and in turn was rewarded.  The only thing that is required by both the establishment and by Conservative INC. is that the GOP nominee be pro-life. This was why McCain and not Rudy Guliani was the candidate of the institutional establishment and the Guliani campaign deflated while McCain’s rose in late 2007. Guliani would not change his views and his political career was finished and he knew it.  This, plus the nasty infighting within Conservative INC. itself, meant that attempts by either Huckabee, Romney or Thompson to stop McCain were useless.

So McCain won, but outside of the official party there was hardly any enthusiasm about his campaign in August 2008. Certainly not from Conservative INC., who, beaten in the GOP primaries yet again and this time by a man they truly despised, sat sullenly were on the sidelines.  It was this situation that prompted the McCain campaign to look way, way outside the box for a running mate. Had it been left to McCain to choose himself he would have certainly picked his fellow so-called “maverick” Joe Lieberman to be his running mate but this would have violated the cardinal rule within the party about abortion and potentially lead to disruption in the convention. For a campaign obsessed with presenting Potemkin Village image of the party of being united and enthusiastic about the upcoming campaign a Lieberman nomination would have been a disaster. Even long-time McCainiac  Bill Kristol wouldn’t support it.  Instead he suggested a little-known female governor from Alaska he met while sailing one of those Alaska cruises establishment Right publications usually take.  He  saw in her the tool upon which the base of the party would rally behind the McCain campaign which would lead it to victory which would keep institutional establishment in power.

At first it worked. The rank and file were enthused again because many did see in her someone like themselves, a politically active middle-class mother who successfully rose through the ranks. Conservative INC. took note and jumped on board and supported the ticket whole heartily (treating her as though she were the nominee not McCain) and Palin became a star in her own right. But as we saw during the campaign, this balanced ticket of the establishment and Conservative Inc.  was not exactly a tune full of harmony. Because they viewed her as just a symbol for their own purposes, the McCain camp treated Palin as though she was their puppet, a standard to be displayed as she wrote in her book. They tried to cram her with a lot of talking points and ideas she probably didn’t understand fully herself which didn’t make look overly bright in sit-down interviews. That she had her own agenda or things to say was kept suppressed which led to tensions that exploded after the election. Indeed the failure of the establishment was on full display throughout the campaign. Unable to articulate a new vision for itself that contrasted itself great to the failed Bush II Administration, the establishment could only succeed with the use of such Conservative INC. symbolism such as Sarah Palin or “Joe the Plumber.” Yet the success was temporary and fleeting and had the added upshot of only encouraging Conservative INC. to think of itself only in terms of image rather than substance.

Even though they lost, Palin made sure she would not take the blame and did everything she could to separate herself from the debacle. In attacking her afterward, McCain’s stupid aides only helped her cause by elevating her to martyr status among her supporters in the “base”.  What this means for 2012 one does not wish to speculate on too much because there is too much time in-between for events to shape the race.  Suffice to say, Palin’s star power may very well be enough to make her the first person to have a united Conservative INC. behind her along with having some establishment support. Such charisma may very discourage idiotic and useless campaigns by a Pence or a Santorum and Mike Huckabee’s “compassionate conservatism” may have well done him in by granting clemency to a killer. A field cleared of pretenders and wannabes  will make Palin more formidable to messrs. Romney and Pawlenty, who, because he kept his day job, is going to be bogged down throughout 2010 with state problems such as budget deficits and a new Vikings’ stadium. No doubt he is trying to position himself between the two and finding being in the middle very difficult. The current bad economy doesn’t leave a lot of money out there to support a large field of candidates outside of the aforementioned plus a Ron Paul and or Gary Johnson.

To her supporters, it really doesn’t matter whether Palin has a 20-point plan for this or that or a strategic foreign policy vision because the bond to her is emotional rather than intellectual. While she still has much to overcome, it’s not as much as one would think. And the continued failures of the GOP in Washington, along with the Tea Party movement outside of it, will only serve to make her stronger.