A Conservative Woman Asks: How Seriously Should We Take Sarah Palin?

Sarah Palin is a lightning rod. Her plain-speaking, common-sense approach to the issues of the day has people on both sides of the aisle up in arms.

"We can't understand why a thoughtful or reasonable person," one liberal blogger told me, "would take their time to defend her. Now you and those who legitimize her imbue her with a certain degree of seriousness that no one on the left is willing to give her."

At the same time my friend, Vicki Vasques, who recently stood for election to the Virginia House of Delegates, lamented prior to her campaign that she feared she would be – as a woman and a Republican – "Palinized," where any misstep with the media would shift focus to her as a woman over her competency as a candidate.

So how seriously should we take Palin? The publication of her memoir, "Going Rogue," has thrust her back into the political spotlight.

Since I wrote "You've Come a Long Way, Maybe" -- about women in the 2008 election -- women in particular have been after me to explain Palin's candidacy and her viability as a national candidate in 2012. The looming question: "How can you defend someone who is a champion for conservative ideals in one moment and then runs from the fight in the next?" But did she run from the fight or to it?

The Feminist Trap

At one level, Palin is disliked because she is a successful woman who stands for a set of values the dominant feminist culture believes antithetical to what women want or need.

One would think that liberal advocates for women would at least show Palin -- as someone who achieved success in "a man's world" -- a modicum of respect, no matter how grudgingly. Instead, as they openly confess, they don't accept her or her appeal.

Gloria Steinem dismissed her in the Los Angeles Times op-ed saying, "This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified women just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women need and want."

People like Steinem are quick to reveal their contempt, born of a fear that Palin might actually succeed. They fear her potential -- as a political leader, as the vanguard of a populist conservative uprising, as a fundraising powerhouse -- and the way it threatens their position, speaking for "all women" based on a narrow view of issues that limited women in the 1960s and '70s.

The Breakout Star

For all that, Palin remains a force in American politics. Her appearance on the national stage gave John McCain his only bump in the polls in 2008 -- and she's the beneficiary of a vacuum in GOP leadership that propels her forward today.

Palin will continue to be a force in U.S. politics because she addresses the anxieties and aspirations of blue-collar America in a way that connects. She "personifies a belief in a traditional America and she's prepared to be very blunt," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said recently. "A third of the country finds that very, very compelling."

Indeed her bluntness has value in the political arena.

Her Facebook post raising the issue of "death panels" in the initial draft of the Democrats' health care bill changed the debate, putting the GOP on offense for the first time and leading Senate Finance Committee to delete the provision from its draft.

Her endorsement of the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffmann in New York's 23^rd Congressional District immediately legitimized his candidacy in a three-way race. He was narrowly defeated, but only after driving the liberal Republican Party candidate out of the race.

In the first six months of 2009, Palin's SarahPAC raised $733,000. "Going Rogue" hit bestseller status online long before it was released. And, reaching the holy grail of American culture, she was given the chance to sit down with Oprah to promote it.

But the question remains, is Palin only a voice for a certain segment of the conservative movement? Does she have broader appeal or is her brand too damaged?

History dictates that her short run on the national ticket places her at the front of the GOP pack. It also partially explains the low-brow attacks from fellow Republicans who are jockeying to push down her viability for the sake of other allegiances.

The more obvious challenge is that Palin appears content as the cheerleader for only one side of the stadium.

When it comes to the tea party activists types who hunger for change, there's no doubt she strikes a responsive chord. She is one of them, a small-town mom who climbed to the top of what Disraeli called "the greasy pole." She comes across as unbeholden to special interests and, being from Alaska, is about as far removed from Washington as one can be. For this segment of the electorate (and perhaps others), which is most clearly not the New York-Washington elites, she is the real deal. That strength makes her both relevant and unavoidable.

Yet others, particularly women, cannot reconcile her image as a leading conservative with her political missteps, like resigning from the Alaska governorship. "How can she say she wants to lead the country," they tell me, "when she's a quitter?"

But Palin's national aspirations, if she has them, could not be reached from the geographic hinterland of American politics. Her future lies in the lower 48. Her move from the governorship of Alaska, though clumsy and distasteful, gives her the freedom to realign herself politically for higher office.

But that's not enough for her to be taken seriously at the national level. There's a disconnect that "the smart set," as H.L. Mencken called them, cannot resolve. Reversing what's considered an intellectual gap and tempering a hostile media does not happen easily.

It requires more Sunday talk shows and less Oprah. In the trajectory of choices, these are not easy ones to make.