Dean Broder Jumps The Moose

David Broder, Dean of the Village, has finally snapped.  Declaring Sarah Palin's muddled word-salad Tea Party Convention speech as "pitch-perfect populism" I finally have to admit the old man has blown a couple capacitors and needs to be taken into the shop for repair.

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself, even with notes on her palm.

This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me. I gave her high marks for her vice presidential acceptance speech in St. Paul. But then, and always throughout that campaign, she was laboring to do more than establish her own place. She was selling a ticket headed by John McCain against formidable Democratic opposition and burdened by the legacy of the Bush administration.

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington.

We're supposed to take a woman who scribbled notes on her palm seriously.  A woman who flubbed and said "Alaska" when she meant "America."  A woman who was the headline speaker at a convention of six hundred nutbars, kooks, Birthers and idiots.  A woman who quit her job as governor to go on a book tour and join FOX News as a contributor.

David Broder says we need to take her seriously as a political populist force in this nation.  It's Broder who has the power to grant Palin this gravitas, where any sane, rational human being would laugh.  He does in spades with a Rich Lowry Starburst Special.

Broder hasn't just jumped the shark, he's put Joanie Loves Chachi on Blu-Ray.  God help us all.