Sarah Palin: Queen of the Brokered Convention?

Palin's roar about brokered conventions is severely scaring RINOs

Bernie Quigley over at The Hill's Pundit Blog opined the other day about the possibility of a brokered convention in the GOP race for president that he believed would come down to a contest between former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  This prospect is severely distressing to the severely conservative (in rhetoric only) Mitt Romney, who was pretty sure that his coronation was imminent.  He's running for office for Pete's sake.

Among other things, Quigley observed:

If Jeb Bush is proposed, so Sarah Palin should be minutes later. She is now and always has been the singular Jacksonian voice in the original Tea Party phenomenon; the only one who can bring it to the mainstream. Her absence from the primary race has left a vacuum and no substitute has been found. Every other possible or potential leadership hopeful has risen and receded in this long Republican primary season.

The scenario of the brokered convention has been mentioned before but is getting a lot more attention in recent days.  This is because establishment darling Mitt Romney was defeated by also-ran Rick Santorum in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri last week.  They may not have given him much mojo in the delegate department, but they were enough to scare the fragile Olympics-saving RINO from Massachusetts.  He's so frightened that he's actually not going to participate in one of the upcoming debates.  With Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul all promising to stay in the race for a long time, it's quite possible that a race that has seen more ups and downs than a normal cycle, would produce uneven results and no clear winner in the delegate count.

In other words, it's going to be a very unconventional campaign.  Somebody told us that a while back.

Things got more interesting last night when Sarah Palin told Eric Bolling on Fox Business Network that she would "do whatever she could to help" and that "all bets" would be "off" regarding "who would offer themselves up in the name of service" at a brokered convention.  In other words, asked point blank if she'd accept the nomination if the brokered convention turned to her, Palin told her countless supporters that she would indeed answer that call:



This is a huge seismic shift in an already tumultuous election cycle.  Tea party patriots and common sense Constitutional conservatives now can see the light at the end of the tunnel of fatally flawed candidates.  And Palin has now signaled how unwilling she is to allow "the establishment to pick the nominee" this go round.

Mr. Inevitable Romney is no doubt SEVERELY concerned about that woman from Wasilla.

The non-Romney vote is unable to unify behind a single candidate.  They flood back and forth between the sometimes big-government-inclined social conservative Rick Santorum and the sometimes ideologically and morally erratic political visionary Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich is down for the moment and Santorum has surged into the position as the alternative to Mitt Romney.  That is sure to change again as Romney has unleashed his multi-million dollar attack dogs onto Santorum after politically assassinating Newt Gingrich.  Should he succeed again in destroying Santorum, the non-Romney vote will have to return to the now down-and-out former speaker.  This means that it is a very real possibility that Romney will win the blue state RINO breeding grounds while Santorum and Gingrich will each pick off a few red states where people cling to guns and God.

If this back and forth continues, neither Santorum nor Gingrich will fall low enough to justify dropping out nor will they earn enough delegates to clinch the nomination.  If they can deny Romney enough states, he too will fall short of the magic number.

I'm by no means an expert on brokered conventions, but it seems to me that the GOP would then be looking for a new consensus candidate to reunite the war-torn party for the fall.  Having failed to vanquish a relatively weak field, Romney will find that his RINO friends will begin canoodling with another as-yet-unsullied RINO darling like Chris Christie, Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels to take his spot before his political corpse is even cold.

Having fought off the RINOcracy coronation for so long, the tea party and more conservative grassroots element of the party will not be interested in party unity if that requires uniting behind a moderate squish.  Santorum and Gingrich will be too damaged to claim the mantle of conservatism and Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry embarrassed themselves out of contention with their presidential train wrecks.

Enter Sarah Palin.  Palin's reception at CPAC and her consistent record of both rhetoric and action of sound common sense Constitutional conservatism aimed at sudden and relentless reform will be very attractive.  And now that the folks know that she'd be willing to entertain such an offer, the unification would be easy.  Palin is the only prominent conservative alternative that would be able to bring along the Ron Paul libertarians, the Newt Gingrich agents of reform and the Santorum socially conservative supporters.

Sarah Palin is nothing if not politically adept.  By making these statements in a public manner, it suggests that Mrs. Palin believes the brokered convention is a very real possibility and sees a path forward for her to emerge as the conservative messenger to take on President Obama's radical leftist ideology.  She would not make such comments if she didn't see a path forward.

And Mr. Romney, who can't win an election on his own merits and rises only after pursuing a scorched-earth slanderous negative campaign against his political opponents is not able to go after the Mama Grizzly.  As a non-candidate, Mr. Romney has no possible course of attack until it is too late to do anything about it.

To be sure, the delegates to the GOP convention will mostly be establishment tools handpicked for their excellence in sycophancy.  Perhaps that too is another reason why the Mama Grizzly let this one slip.  Independent tea party voters now have to begin finding out ways to become delegates to the GOP convention in Tampa where possible.  In those states and areas where that is not possible, they need to begin to network within their local, county and state GOP to find ways to apply pressure to those in power.  American Grizzlies United and other tea party organizations need to start compiling important information on how to take this fight to the convention floor and get good solid independent conservatives into places of influence.  It might not be a bad idea to revisit that whole draft movement as well.  Everything should be on the table in an effort to deny King Mittens the nomination.

This election represents a fight for the heart and soul of the GOP, the conservative movement as a whole, and the country.  Sarah Palin has just again referenced having the "fire in the belly" to stand for those principles.  These next few weeks will make or break the current field of candidates.  If the GOP primary voters are willing to stand up to the GOP status quo that paved the way for big government conservatism and Democrat-light policies as this contest wears on, there just may be a reward in the end in the form of a fighter from Wasilla capable of knocking out a second-rate community organizer and his radical fundamental transformation of America.

As Governor Palin might say, "now is the time to rage against the machine."