New directions for Sarah Palin, Elizabeth Warren and Ron Paul

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 10/7/11

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 for the Texas Independence 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 magical mystery 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.

Citing Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions, it was suggested up here in 2003 that the northern-most New England states need not participate in the invasion of Iraq because it was unconstitutional. George Kennan liked the idea and agreed with it. John Kenneth Galbraith thought our (I helped) idea of sending our own New England representative to the UN “wonderfully to the good.”

And Kennan recognized the need of shifting from global to regional in his last book, “Round the Cragged Hill”:

“I have often diverted myself, and puzzled my friends, by wondering how it would be if our country, while retaining certain of the rudiments of a federal government, were to be decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment. I could conceive of something like nine of these republics—let us say, New England; the Middle Atlantic states; the Middle West; the Northwest (from Wisconsin to the Northwest, and down the Pacific coast to central California); the Southwest (including southern California and Hawaii); Texas (by itself); the Old South; Florida (perhaps including Puerto Rico); and Alaska; plus three great self-governing urban regions, those of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—a total of twelve constituent entities. To these entities I would accord a larger part of the present federal powers than one might suspect—large enough, in fact, to make most people gasp.”

Jefferson’s premise is that the only defense against a bloated or malevolent federal government is the states organically related in their regions. In this model Texans are Texans, Alaskans Alaskan and New England may find its Emersonian soul again before Bloomberg buys it. Hayek works in this model. Health care works. Everything works. Not how it worked in 1930, but how it will work successfully in 2030.