“King-Making” Tea Party Has Its Queen in Sarah Palin, 2012 Frontrunner, Matt Taibbi Says

No figure in American politics combines such blatant ignorance with a fervid advocacy of Israeli militarism as Sarah Palin—2012 GOP Frontrunner. Yet, the question remains: Is Palin so foolish that even the lowly GOP nomination for the American presidency would elude her, frontrunner status notwithstanding. Matt Taibbi says Palin is the ONE for the Tea Party, the renegade bunch of bigots functioning as the GOP’s Central Committee.

By Peter Gorenstein in TechTicker [see Taibbi interview at TechTicker]

“I don’t think about Sarah Palin,” President Obama tells ABC’s Barbara Walters in a new exclusive interview.

Maybe he should.

The former Alaska Governor “could be the nominee” in 2012, Griftopia author Matt Taibbi tells Tech Ticker. No fan of Palin or the Tea Party, Taibbi recognizes her influence on the current political landscape. “The Tea Party is now in the king-making position in the Republican Party.”

Taibbi notes that Palin and Obama shares an “innate ability to emotionally connect with audiences.” That’s no easy trick and one that was also shared by former Presidents Regan and Clinton.

Not in agreement with Tea Party politics Taibbi does sympathize with the anger felt by many Americans these days.

“It’s coinciding with the tremendous disenfranchisement of ordinary people,” he tells Aaron and Dan in this clip. “They’re angry there are things that are happening to them but their anger is not coherent. They don’t know who exactly to be angry at.”

Tea Party members, he notes, are mostly angry about being “stripped of political power,” angry at elites they see as controlling the country’s destiny and the two-party system that has failed them.

“It’s the specifics that they don’t always get right,” Taibbi says is the problem. 

Taibbi says Tea Party members should be angry at the bailed out banks who sold people homes they couldn’t afford (using fraud and predatory lending to do it in some cases) not the foreclosed homeowner next door who is now desperate for relief.