Sarah: "I'm One of You"

I've strongly recommended that Sarah's slogan in the presidential race of 2012 should be: "I am ONE of YOU."

Sarah Palin has libertarian, conservative, and populist elements -- and particularly the latter. The Alaska Constitution is a populist document, indicating for example that the resources should be developed for the benefit of the people. Her motto in Alaska is: "Serve the People!"

Sarah has been a member of a union (broadcast journalists) and her husband currently is, as will be her son-in-law. I believe the reason she wanted to stay and campaign in Michigan -- and go into auto plants -- was because she identifies much more with autoworkers than she does with the heads of GM and Ford.

I spoke to more than 100 union members in Beaver County, PA, who were bucking the union bosses and voting for Sarah Palin. At the Palin Really in Beaver, PA, dozens of UMW people were there wearing their "Clean Coal" hard hats. She realizes those people are the new face of the Republican Party in our time. The Sarah Coalition is an extremely diverse group, more diverse in fact than Obama's.

More than 100,000 union members in PA apparently backed McCain-Palin. She wants their votes -- and their needs are critically important to her. They know she is one of them.

I've strongly recommended that Sarah's slogan in the presidential race of 2012 should be: "I am One of You." In fact, she is one of us.

She is not anti-gay. In fact, one of the first groups that endorsed her -- I asked them to -- was GayPatriotWest, the most important gay conservative group on the Web.

On abortion, she's said she doesn't believe in criminalizing it, looking at it much more as matter of conscience, education, and adoption than of legal restrictions. Most people in America agree that there should be fewer abortions and more adoptions. That should be the goal, rather than to engage in a Second Civil War.

Sarah Palin knows that a politician who disagrees strongly with public sentiment is known as . . . a loser. The people rule, and the effective politicians are very good listeners, as Sarah is.

She knows that "politics is the art of the possible." Some of my fellow conservatives, alas, seem to see it as the art of the impossible. Sarah understands that to win elections, it's critical to get many more votes than we did in November from younger people, Asians, Native Americans, women, and, especially, Hispanics. We will not get their votes by irritating them.

Older white males -- I happen to be one -- are fine, but they aren't nearly enough to prevail in a national election (or, apparently, in most statewide elections). Thus, Gov. Palin understands that politics deals with "The World as it is, not as we'd like it to be." I'm very comfortable with that view.