Seems like only yesterday I was watching Sarah Palin stump for Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate Runoff race. My how times have changed.
Before a huge crowd gathered in the smoldering July heat of The Woodlands, Texas, alongside then Senator Jim DeMint, Palin said:
But the good news is, there is nothing wrong with America that a good ol’ fashioned election can’t fix. Ted [Cruz] is a proven, common sense, Constitutional conservative. He’s a fighter and he will bring new leadership to the United States Senate. He will shrink government, he will be putting it back on the side of the people and he will defend the United States Constitution. Ted Cruz represents the positive change that we need.
In addition to Gov. Palin, Cruz also garnered endorsements from Senator Rand Paul, Senator Pat Toomey, Senator Jim DeMint, RedState, and Sean Hannity in 2012.
But that was four years ago, and 2016 has brought with it chaos and disorder.
The New York Times reported Tuesday afternoon:
“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president,” Ms. Palin said in a statement provided by his campaign.Her support is the highest-profile backing for a Republican contender so far.“I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement,” Mr. Trump said in a statement trumpeting Mrs. Palin’s decision. “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”
Rumors of Palin’s pending endorsement began circulating early Tuesday. Cruz’s campaign immediately responded saying:
“I think it [would] be a blow to Sarah Palin, because Sarah Palin has been a champion for the conservative cause, and if she was going to endorse Donald Trump, sadly, she would be endorsing someone who’s held progressive views all their life on the sanctity of life, on marriage, on partial-birth abortion,” Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said on CNN’s “New Day.”
Which ultimately lead to Bristol Palin, daughter of Gov. Palin, to pen this nice little note in Patheos:
Bristol wrote:
After hearing what Cruz is now saying about my mom, in a negative knee-jerk reaction, makes me hope my mom does endorse Trump. Cruz’s flip-flop, turning against my mom who’s done nothing but support and help him when others sure didn’t, shows he’s a typical politician. How rude to that he’s setting up a false narrative about her!America doesn’t need that. We need someone who has a vision for economic prosperity, who won’t let us get kicked around in the world, and who will fight for our future.I didn’t go to Harvard Law School, but I know this: You can like two people in a race, but there will only one president.The audacity to suggest that because she chooses one over the other will somehow “damage” her just shows arrogance.
And then Cruz attempted to mitigate the very public spat by saying, “I love Sarah Palin,” and referring to himself as “a big fan.”
That politicians are viewed as celebrities with fandoms is only part of the problem, but that’s a discussion for another time.
And so we have a politician turned reality TV star endorsing a reality TV star turned politician. But this is what the people want, apparently. Limited government? Conservatism? Psssh. People want to be entertained!
There is no Conservative blasphemy afoot. Palin has long since forsook the Tea Party platform that propelled her into national stardom. After all, in the same year she endorsed Cruz, Palin endorsed the ultimate (by some estimations) Old Guard Republican — Senator Orin Hatch.
National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke expounds:
Alas, there is no grand principle on display here. There is nothing but opportunism and ego. For a long time now, Sarah Palin has been apt to say anything and everything to keep the cameras buzzing around her hive. This rotten endorsement completes the decline. What, we might ask, has become of Palin’s beloved Tea Party? What, too, of her purported admiration for limited government, and of her ostensible hatred of heretics and fakers? The prospect of a mass movement that was earnestly committed to libertarianism was always a little too good to be true, but even I didn’t imagine it ending like this. All that talk of the Constitution and the Declaration; all that energy expended against the cronies and the rent-seekers; all those purifying voter drives — and for what? So that Sarah Palin could add a few zeroes to her bank balance and Donald Trump could go from the purchaser to the bought? Today was the day that Rick Santelli’s famous yelp finally melted into populism and avarice. Today, at about ten minutes past six, P. T. Barnum beat out Hayek for the soul of the insurgent Right. Today, the rebels became the charlatans they had set out to depose. What comes next will be anybody’s guess.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
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