Governor Palin 4 President

After signing his landmark health care measure into law and re-stoking the fires of his presidency, Barack Obama took a victory lap in Iowa on March 25 and dared Republicans to put health care repeal at the center of their 2010 campaigns with the cheeky challenge "Go for it." Sarah Palin jumped in with both high-heeled feet and a rallying cry the equivalent of "Hell, yes!"

In Washington, many Republican leaders are now waffling and wavering over their previous aggressively negative stance on the health care bill, seeing peril in opposing the measure's more popular provisions. They are searching for a more nuanced and modulated message that will allow them to avoid the damning Party of No label, while still making their principles clear.

But Sarah Palin doesn't really do nuance or modulation. Defiance is more her style, and this past weekend she used her folksy brand of full-throated opposition to dominate American politics yet again with appearances in Arizona and Nevada. The lady from the frozen north happens to be one heck of a Sun Belt candidate, and within the conservative movement she has unmatched national appeal. […]

Indeed, by carefully controlling her own visibility — and refusing to be challenged or held accountable by adversaries or the press — she has become even more irresistible as programming and copy. Just last week, she signed a television deal reportedly worth millions ($12 million) to be featured in an eight-episode documentary called Sarah Palin's Alaska on Discovery's TLC channel. [...]

Palin hit the road this past weekend to influence the fortunes of two 27-year veterans of Congress, who simultaneously entered the House in 1983 and the Senate in 1987 and who are now facing the toughest races of their careers. Palin spent Friday and Saturday morning in Tucson and Phoenix, Ariz., to help save the job of John McCain, the man who put her on the political and cultural map when he added her to the Republican ticket in 2008. […]

Back together on the stump for the first time since the end of the presidential campaign, Palin delivered the goods: earnestly, even poignantly, selling the message that McCain is a true Tea Party conservative and that the movement needs some battle-tested, experienced veterans in Congress to skillfully take the fight to the Democrats, alongside younger firebrands like Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and herself. "We need new blood," she said, "but we also need heroes and statesmen."

Notably, all the cable-news networks (Fox included) cut away from live coverage once Palin had concluded her remarks and McCain began his, although McCain's team professed only delight with the turnout.


Perhaps most important, McCain was consecrated by the darling of the conservative movement, who inspires love from its members while he has stirred mostly mistrust.  […]


But the passage of health care gives the President's party confidence that they have a fighting chance to keep Palin from commanding her grass-roots army to victory. Don't be surprised if the former Alaska governor, as well as a host of politicians, pundits and the press, use martial imagery to describe events over the next seven months and to rally the troops accordingly. For Palin — and Obama, Reid and McCain — the passage of health care was not the war — it was just the opening battle.