Sarah Palin's Poison: The Secret of Her Right-Wing Success

By Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, The Nation
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143922/

This article is adapted from Going Rouge: Sarah Palin--An American Nightmare, edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, available only by direct order from OR Books.

In one way of looking at it, Sarah Palin is the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party.

Electorally, she is the GOP gift that keeps on giving. First there was Campaign 2008, which flamed out with her car-crash Katie Couric interview just as spectacularly as it had begun, three weeks earlier, with her star turn at the Republican convention. More recently, in the November 3 elections this year, she played a crucial role in delivering the Democrats one of their few victories. Palin and her culture-war comrades Rush Limbaugh, Dick Armey and Glenn Beck took up the cause of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the 23rd District Congressional race in New York. As a result the moderate, prochoice Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, bowed out, endorsing Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman was unable to convince the district's overwhelmingly white rural voters that banning abortions and gay marriage and bashing government held the answers to their concerns, and on election day the Democrat triumphed, capturing a district that had been in Republican hands since the nineteenth century.