"How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?" Sarah Palin asked the anti-élitist Tea Party élites — those who could pay $549 for a ticket (liberal lies -tickets were acctually $349 to see Palin) gathered in suffocating self-righteousness at the Opryland Hotel on the first weekend of February. It was classic Palin, a brilliant line, brilliantly delivered: she does folksy far better than George W. Bush or any of the other Republican focus-group populists ever did. It was the signature line of her speech, which rocked the joint — and then, slowly, began to rock the national political community. The...