Why the "Conservative" Elite Hate Palin

Because they're more interested in the "elite" than in the "conservative":

We need to know the precise reasons why too many of the core commentators of our movement turned on Sarah Palin. That is the only way that we can discover if the situation can be salvaged. What we've heard so far is only part of the truth, at best. The response to Palin by such figures as Brooks, Frum, Brookhiser, Buckley, Parker, and Noonan (Krauthammer and Will have been considerably more rational, if still mistaken) has been the farthest thing in the world from reasoned. It has been vicious and feral. People do not react to a merely disagreeable political figure in this manner. All the individuals I mentioned, including Krauthammer and Will in this case, have attacked the McCain/Palin ticket with more ferocity than they have Barack Obama, the most socialist presidential candidate since Henry Wallace. This requires an explanation.


People react that way only to threats. We have to know precisely why the conservative elite is threatened by a successful conservative governor to the point that they have completely lost their bearings. The reasons we've heard so far are nonsense -- you don't call a woman a "cancer" because she says "like" too much or wears flashy shoes. If these questions are not answered, then we will be obliged to formulate our own.


My opinion is no mystery to readers of this site -- that the urban conservative crowd is frightened of Palin because she represents a threat to the standard model of conservatism constructed since the wilderness years of the 1930s, in which a highly-educated and well-connected East Coast coterie led a much larger, less-informed heartland contingent. This, like it or not, is elitism. By their very nature, elites tend to corrode over time. And Sarah Palin, through the very fact of her showing up, has revealed this to be the case in our circle. She upset the enclave conservative applecart, and now they are angry -- a lot angrier than they have been at any lefties in recent memory.


Well, applecarts are made for upsetting -- they must be knocked over from time to time, to assure against smugness, arrogance, and decay. You can't simply decry events like this -- you have to learn from them. That is what our little elite is refusing to do. And that tells us all we need to know.

Indeed it does.

Conservatism will only be strengthened when Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, David Frum et al finish their inevitable journey to the respectability they crave.

Were they fully honest, they'd acknowledge that their affiliation with conservatism has much more to do with William F. Buckley, Jr's style than his ideology.