Ross is right that populist conservatism needs elites who are not in denial about political realities.  One reason why this is necessary is so that populist conservatism acquires some substance and definition beyond the reflex of deriding Beltway insiders and their all-important cocktails.  What has been amazing to me as I watch and participate in the back-and-forth between Palinites and Palin critics is how readily the admirers of Palin’s so-called populism adopt the definition of populism set by those establishmentarians most instinctively hostile to it.  Under this hostile definition, populism is necessarily loud, proud and ignorant, because this flatters establishmentarian assumptions about their own views.  According to establishmentarians, populists typically know little or nothing about policy, to which those who rally around anyone remotely resembling a populist often reply, “Yes, our candidate knows nothing–isn’t it great?”  The candidate’s admirers think they are sticking it to poncy elitists when they revel in their candidate’s cluelessness and “good instincts,” but they are just helping to confirm the prejudices of anti-populists and reinforce the status quo. 

Rather than offering a coherent alternative on behalf of the many, this kind of populism is readily co-opted and deployed in the service of established interests that have no intention of changing anything important.  In the end, this pseudo-populism anoints existing policy, no matter how flawed and directed to serving particular interests, with the chrism of popular enthusiasm for a certain candidate.  As I said before, populism without policy substance is not populism at all, but a reflex doomed to being rejected as the hollow protest that it is.  The Palinites who want to identify populist conservatism with her are setting up populist conservatism for failure by defining it as little more than lifestyle politics, contempt for mainstream media and the occasional flag-waving. 

This is called populism because crowds will always respond favorably to generic appeals to patriotism, having government work for them and being represented by “one of us,” but in the absence of anything more it grows old pretty quickly.  One way to recognize pseudo-populism is how easy it is, and how quickly it loses its lustre.  One of the most important populist goals ought to be entitlement reform, since there are few things more threatening to the long-term well-being of the people than exploding entitlement costs, but that would entail controversy, political risk and telling the public unpleasant truths about the unsustainability of existing entitlements and the folly of adding on more.  What distinguishes real populism from cheap demaoguery, among other things, is the willingness to tell people that they cannot have it all and to govern as if that were true.