Star One Smart Blog's

There’s a showdown in the making it seems…the ‘effete, urbanesque, National Review Online-intelligentsia-blue-blooded near-liberal Rockefeller (R)epublicans’ who are playing the ‘credentialism’ game and have (at best) lukewarm support for Sarah Palin. There’s much attendant hand-wringing and harrumph!ing amongst some of those elitist small-'c' conservatives at the NRO. It’s off-putting at best, and has the making of that Party fight we've itched to fight for, oh, a few terms now.

Versus those of us who are not so much Republican; we with the small (r) and the large 'C': (C)onservatives, the Reagan wing, and not neo-conservatives either. We of this group are awakened, now, because of McCain's VP selection, Sarah Palin.

It’s time those elite blue-blood main-stream RINO Republicans are given a swift kick by the small ‘r’’s. By the big ‘C’onservatives.

This is the same sort of thing Ronald Reagan faced in 1982, when the Rockefeller sorts, worried, installed Bush Sr. as VP to keep Reagan under watch and thumb. We see how that played out…Reagan is a hero to those of us who appreciate a strong conservative politician; Bush, and later Bush the Weaker, not so much.

Sarah Palin I can see in place to keep conservative watch and check on John McCain. And, later, as one of the strong ‘C’onservatives we’ll need to lead the Republican party out of the wilderness. Even if we lose this election, Palin-Jindal or Jindal-Palin is our future.

Our only HOPE!

---

Related: “Why I let my National Review subscription lapse, personified” Jeff G.

In fact, how Brookhiser even gets through the day standing up for dullard conservatives with their superficial rah-rah-ism is anybody’s guess — but I suspect that he thinks of his service to the conservative cause much like “progressives” think of their service to the dispossessed minorities they claim to champion: he’ll allow them along for the ideological ride, provided they just shut up and not embarrass him by pretending they can think for themselves, at least on matters that don’t involve football pools or church bake sales.

Related: Newt Gingrich

There is something going on this weekend which traditional pundits, traditional consultants and traditional politicians are simply missing. All of the normal biography-oriented and issue-oriented analysis misses an emotional gestalt event comparable to when Ronald Reagan in 1980 crystalized his leadership in New Hampshire when he seized control of the GOP debate.

In one sudden moment Friday, John McCain fundamentally changed American politics in a manner that transcends issues and details.

The great threat to the Obama-Biden ticket can be captured in one word: authenticity.

---