Sarah Palin’s Barbarism

By Patrick Brennan
April 28, 2014 12:58 PM

It’s been no secret for a while that Sarah Palin, erstwhile vice-president candidate, is no longer a serious political contender — for evidence of that transition, note that even among her faithful, at CPAC this year, she got just 2 percent of the vote in the straw poll, tied with Condoleezza Rice. But as her crowd-pleasing performance in the very final speech of that event, and her lucrative contract with Fox News and huge social-media following, indicate that she’s gone from being a potential political leader to something of a cultural totem, almost a political pastor.

That means her speeches have gone from being standard political pablum to something even more amusing — more or less a long string of hokey but often amusing jokes. But for all the lightheartedness, her appeal is to a set of people who take seriously their commitment to faith and freedom, right? Well, should this line garner laughs from such a crowd?