The debates minus Sarah Palin

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 10/7/11

“We are Dartmouth. We speak for the trees!”

“Michele Bachmann get out of my womb and that goes for the rest of you too!”

So rose the chants politely corralled on Dartmouth’s common off to the edge of the large Bloomberg stage. Newt Gingrich paid homage to Sarah Palin in vindicating language about “death panels.” But this was a neutral forum which included everyone. Except Rick Perry.

In a discussion at Dartmouth’s Beta House later the other Rick Perry was revealed. Thoughtful, dynamic, engaged, with better ideas. In my opinion a candidate remarkably like Wesley Clark. And like General Clark, his premise that energy independence will being peace and prosperity is a little misguided. All history’s dynamics today linked to external oil; Islamic forces at a receding realm, Israel in a the rising realm - and cannot be made separate. But Perry smart and uncomplicated on the Canada pipeline. “Build it now.” Otherwise the agreement will go to China. But it will be the same with external oil.

The blurb cited by the MSM at the Beta event was that Rick Perry mixed up the date of the American Revolution. Gotcha! Does anyone really think that Perry doesn’t know that 1776 was in the 18th century?

This was the most polite debate. Designed perhaps for The New Yorker crowd but with a feel like that of the T.S. Eliot poem, the one where the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table.

“I’m bored,” Tom Keene repeated in his afternoon broadcasts for Bloomberg.

Note to Sarah Palin: October 28 is the last day to register in New Hampshire. There is still time.

The presidential race is okay, but the most fascinating politicians in our time are Sarah Palin and Elizabeth Warren. They are doubles, one produced by the presence of the other. I’d like to see Palin and Warren run for president in 2016, Palin for the Alaskan Independence Party, Warren for the New England Party. Throw in Ron Paul who won the Values Voter Summit straw poll this weekend for the Texas Independence Party. (Howard Dean for the Vermont Party?) Start again from scratch.

Sooner if Mike Bloomberg is stupid enough to start (buy) a third party run. Bloomberg believes he can buy America like he bought New York. But New York is not America. He vastly misunderstands America. The Democrats and Republicans, those Ford guys and Chevy guys of the establishment, in their drive to mediocrity will continue to send in their own; Hillary Clinton maybe or someone related to her and Mitch McConnell, Kay Bailey Hutchison or a Bush relative. But if the times are to ascend; we need to think regionally.

That was the idea of the Tea Party before it was commandeered by Glenn Beck in his quest for world conquest. But the Tea Party today is nothing but a provincial rant.

It might be recalled that it did not start on the right, it started on the left. It did not start in the Obama administration; it started in the George W. Bush administration. It started under the influence of two places: New England and Alaska. Two major influences were Emerson’s essays, particularly, “Self Reliance” here and the venerable AIP there. There was a silent partner in the New England initiative, Thomas Jefferson.

These ideas leave the discussion now that Palin has been sent into exile and Ron Paul has been accepted at the table with the tall men.