Palin lacks what GOP needs most

Governor still thrills conservatives but is not likely to take back the White House

By Doyle McManus

Is Sarah Palin the answer the Republican Party is looking for?

Not likely. Palin’s abrupt announcement that she’s quitting as governor of Alaska may be part of a long-term strategy that leads to the Oval Office. But at the moment, it looks more like the impulsive act of a politician who can’t abide criticism.

Take Palin at her word: She quit because she didn’t think she could get much done for Alaska in her remaining 18 months in office, beset as she was with ethics charges that never seemed to go away. Palin’s popularity in Alaska has sunk from 93 percent in 2007 to 54 percent in May, still a respectable rating but a huge drop. She had few prospects of closing out her term on a wave of landmark achievements that would boost her as a national candidate. She faced a tough fight for re-election in 2010.

Palin says she still wants to have national impact. Her main asset, of course, is a base of fervent support among social conservatives who see her as fresh, exciting and embattled — the people who responded to her resignation by sending contributions to her fundraising committee, SarahPAC.

The problem for Palin and her party is that she

doesn’t have what Republicans need most: an idea. For the last half-century, the GOP has prided itself on being the “party of ideas,” a coalition that constantly invented new ways to apply its basic principles — smaller government, lower taxes and an assertive foreign policy — to the nation’s problems.

Under George W. Bush, the string of successful ideas ran out. In 2008, it was the Democrats of Barack Obama, not the GOP, who won by proposing a detailed agenda of new policies and new initiatives.

A voter interested in Palin’s approach to national issues will look in vain for new ideas. In her 2008 vice presidential campaign and since, she has been a champion not so much of ideas as of attitudes: anger at the national media, fear of a “big-government takeover,” and the charge that unnamed liberals “deride” American ideals. Those aren’t ideas; they’re slogans. Palin may have the recipe for winning the hearts of the 37 percent of Americans who describe themselves as conservatives, but it won’t attract votes from the 38 percent who call themselves moderates — and who remain the key to any presidential election.

Social and cultural conservatives may thrill to her tones. Political reporters may (indeed, do) yearn to see her run.

But for a party working to regain its footing as the champion of conservative ideas in a nation whose electorate will soon be ready to listen, this sled dog won’t pull.

(McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where this essay first appeared.)

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