Palin by comparison

On Sarah Palin:

As a wordsmith, I must humbly confess that the current president has shown that words must be connected to deeds, and are irrelevant until they do.

So her words have no meaning, until she acts.

If she leads a revived and valid Republican movement, more power to her.

That "I-quit-a-rod" is funny. But in our wired world, that a political leader would skip around a lot restlessly might not be bad; it might even be good. In the era of Twitter, politicians too might jump from idea to idea.

If she's just burned out, well, bully for her for admitting it.

And I give her kudos for not wanting to take a state paycheck if, for any reason, she didn't think she was going to earn it.

This is bipartisan. In the last election, Obama, McCain, Clinton and others picked up their gummit paycheks, had their gummit staffs and perks, and did not work.

Everywhere else they'd be fired.

When, in the meltdown panic, McCain actually went to the Senate, it was as if he hardly knew where the men's room was.

After all that, I have my doubts. She's a genuine populist politician. But does she have the intellectual grounding?

I don't mean she killed time at Harvard, Yale, etc., absorbing the cliches and conventional wisdom.

But if she is just a populist force, she'll just be blown whichever way "the people" are moving.

Both Bushes, and most right-wing politicians, don't really grasp conservative principles. So in the end, they're blown by the biggest wind.

I'm no personal fan of Ronald Reagan. But I have to grudgingly say he understood the core principles of conservativism, and in the main tried to follow them.

Does she? I have my doubts. But her words are nothing, until connected to deeds.