[Swiftwater Gazette] Blithering Idiot to Devious Genius

[Brad Haslett]

There's some good links to some other articles (and the speech) here,
so I'm using a link and not the text -

http://tinyurl.com/ydkesp4

Palin's speech last night was OK, not great and and included a lot of
Palin "boilerplate", but no current politician can slice the legs out
from under "I-Won" the way she can. Personally, I had some
reservations about the Tea Party convention and Palin's appearance,
but she handled it well.  Her call was to not align the Tea Party with
any one political party and not follow any one leader.  That's about
right.  Is she spear-heading a third party?  I don't think so.  My
guess is she wants to turn the GOP on its head at the national level,
similar to what she did in Alaska. At least one Democratic candidate
for the House was in attendance and I wouldn't be surprised to see
some type of official Tea Party support behind Gene Taylor - D - MS in
his re-election bid this fall, as well as some other Blue Dogs.
Regardless of whether Palin is more-or-less the de facto leader of the
Tea Party, she's amassed a great deal of influence in slightly over a
year. Behind Palin's 'sing-song' voice and chirpy attitude, she's a
very competent administrator and "tough-as-nails" negotiator (ask Big
Oil).  Unfortunately, that doesn't get covered by the press and is
totally missed by her detractors.  She'd make a great POTUS but I have
my doubts about her chances as a candidate.

It doesn't hurt to dream.

Brad