New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters walked through the line crafted by Sarah Palin in 2008 that enabled Donald Trump's success in 2016.
Writing in his book Insurgency, Peters explained using language about entitlement and victimhood from people like Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly led straight to Palin and then, ultimately, Trump.
Palin was the one who attacked the establishment like the Bush family as "blue bloods" who could "pick and choose" the GOP's winners over the will of the voters. Those "elites" The more they attacked her for being absurd or lacking in any kind of political intelligence, they only played into her frame of them. It's the same way Trump played the game.
What Trump called "fake news," Palin called "gotcha questions. When Palin's unwed teenage daughter turned out to be pregnant, the "family values" crowd didn't care. It was the same as Trump's affairs and the tape that eventually surfaced with him bragging he could sexually assault women whenever he wanted.
"Of all the conservative populists who were antecedents to Trump, Palin was his closest contemporary—the first of 'the deplorables,' to borrow Hillary Clinton’s condescending term for Trump supporters that they in turn appropriated," wrote Peters. "As governor of Alaska, Palin took her attacks on the media to a place even most conservatives didn’t go, accusing journalists of outright fabrication and demanding that they 'quit makin’ things up.' It was 'fake news' by another name. She wasn’t one to let facts stand in the way of a useful line of attack, as she showed when she doubled down on her false claim that [Barack] Obama’s healthcare bill included 'death panels' that would decide if vulnerable populations could receive treatment."
The GOP continued to fight the healthcare bill until 2017 when they finally had an opportunity to overthrow it, despite its widespread popularity. Ironically, it was Palin's former running mate who cast the deciding vote. He explained that the GOP campaigned on "repeal and replace," but not once in ten years did they actually come up with the "replace" part. Without the "replacement," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) couldn't, in good conscience, kill the healthcare of millions of Americans.
“So, how did we get here?” asked "The Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade on Jan. 7, 2021. The answer, Peters explained, is Palin.
His book Insurgency is on sale now.
