Trump 'n' Palin, An Alliance For the Angry
Can this presidential election year get any more weird?
Reality seems to have run off the rails. Let me count the ways:
In the "How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away" Department: Sarah Palin is back, much to the delight of comedy writers everywhere. (I'm talking about you, Tina Fey.) And she's stumping for -- who else? -- Republican frontrunner and fellow former reality TV star Donald Trump.
Yes, this is the Grand Old Party's former vice presidential candidate who endorsed Trump's closest opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, in 2012 in his run-off as a tea party-backed insurgent against establishment-backed Texas Lt. Gov. Dave Dewhurst.
Now Palin was treating Cruz in much the same way that she treated Alaska in 2009 when she walked away from the governorship after serving three years of her four-year term.
Cynics immediately speculated as to how much the billionaire Trump paid Palin for her endorsement. I think it was plenty reward enough for her to be back on the national stage where, as she put it in her rambling announcement speech in Ames, Iowa, "media heads are spinning."
Actually, media heads that I know sound delighted by the boost that Palin and Trump, love 'em or hate 'em, give to the size of our audiences.
And those Democrats who are not petrified by the thought of a "President Trump" are delighted to let him and his pal Palin take attention away from their own heated divisions over self-described "democratic socialist" Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont catching up to centrist frontrunner Hillary Clinton in early state polling.
I told you this was a weird election year. But, wait, there's more:
In the "Chickens Come Home to Roost" Department, we find Palin's "spinning heads" rising in the deep thinkers of the GOP and the conservative movement.
...continued
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
