Sarah Palin's 'Mama Grizzlies' Ad: Calling All Pit Bulls and Pink Elephants

Sarah Palin's first campaign-style advertisement for SarahPAC, a political action committee dedicated, according to its website, "to building America's future, supporting fresh ideas and candidates who share our vision for reform and innovation," has hit the Internet. The video, just shy of two minutes long, is by far Palin's most concerted -- and polished -- effort to appeal to conservative women, a subset of voters Palin has affectionately dubbed the "Mama Grizzlies."

The footage, culled from Palin's recent appearances and speeches (no trace of John McCain is anywhere to be seen, the poor guy), features crowds of women rallying in support of the former Alaska governor, carrying babies, waving signs proclaiming their frustration at being "tax-bled hockey moms" and avowing that Palin "loves her country." Click play below to watch:


Dubbing this political moment a "mom awakening," Palin posits that "moms know when something's wrong," and in this case she means the direction the U.S. of A is heading in -- though the former VP candidate offers scant specifics about what needs to be done. Instead she trots out homespun female power aphorisms, calling her foot soldiers "pit bulls" (with lipstick, no doubt), and proclaiming that the "pink elephant" stampede is coming this November. Lavender donkeys, beware.

Some pundits posit that this is Palin's outreach to middle-of-the-road female voters, her effort put some heart into the seemingly emotionally out-of-touch (male) GOP leadership, lately seen apologizing to BP and dismissing the country's economic woes as "ant"-sized. But is Palin's video really the "Come to Mary" moment that the right has been looking for? Doubtful.

First off, these grizzlies, pit bulls and elephants are virtually all white. Palin's video makes no effort to suggest that her supporters are part of a new and improved big-tent GOP that is championing minority upstarts like Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal. I counted one non-white face in there, right around the 1:05-minute mark, and it wasn't clear if she was an actual Palin supporter or someone who happened to be sitting in the audience waiting for, oh, I dunno, Haley. Republicans are well aware of the importance of the minority (and soon to be majority) vote come stampede time, but Palin's white-pink elephants (call them rosé?) seem blissfully unaware of this.

Second: The rhetoric is as inflammatory as ever. With the exception of the "mom awakening" bit (which must scare the bejesus out of any curfew-breaking 16-year-old), and her calls for "cub protection," Palin's ad features much the same divisive language that arch-right-wingers have long been reliant on. One woman holds a sign saying "Annoy a liberal: work hard & pay your own bills." Zing! That innovative bumper sticker verbiage is right up there with "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" (though from another place on the political spectrum).

Palin herself rides the ole hobbyhorse of assailing the "fundamental transformation" happening in Washington, spooking birthers and Tea Partiers alike, for whom the word "fundamental" is inextricably linked to "Islam" and to whom "fundamental transformation" speaks to a socialist, Obamacared-for-America. Little surprise, then, that right around the time that we hear this, the viewer sees a woman carrying a "Don't Tread on Me" poster.

Of course, dissecting the Logic of Palin is somewhat akin to trying to decode the Fibonacci Sequence: don't bother, it just is. There's no question that this video will fire up the supporters who turn out for Palin rallies, draped in flags, carrying babies and wearing the energized looks of people who finally hear someone speaking their own language. Where it will lead them come November -- this year or in 2012 -- is anyone's guess.