I agree with him on this much—I am wary of seeing any one person, no matter how much I might agree with her principles, being raised as the “messiah” of the right. It just doesn’t make sense to invest that much into one person. It’s nothing against Sarah Palin, I know that I agree with her stances more often than not. I just think people set themselves, and her, up for a big disappointment by putting all this on her.
Not even Reagan in ‘79 and ‘80 aroused the kind of mass hysteria that Palin has since she came on the scene (and the same can be said for Obama).
I’m from Alabama. There’s only one politician in Alabama history that has ever drawn rock star crowds. My father did business with his administrations. I also know that the energy he generated ended up making him a target and he was shot on May 15, 1972 while working the crowd.
And understand that he used that popular frenzy that he whipped up among the ordinary people of the state to rule it by fiat for 25 years. My father was with Wallace for the whole time. He grew to personally like him but the main reason was always that you were either in with Wallace or you were shut out of the process. On a single command Wallace could get the legislature to do whatever he wanted and in the 60s if you defied Wallace, you were soon portrayed as an “enemy of normal Alabamians”
Sorry if I don’t want to see that aspect of Wallacism repeated on the national level.