Sarah Palin’s Little Platoons

Danny Finkelstein’s column today argues that Sarah Palin is the true leader of the Republican party these days. And he doesn’t mean that in a good way:

There is no more eloquent statement of modern Republicanism than resigning office with time still on the clock. Mrs Palin has chosen to talk about power, rather than exercise it. She would rather write a book and give lectures about being a governor than actually be a governor. And her party has made the same choice.

It has cast itself, deliberately, as the opposition, the angry outsider, and it is more comfortable in this role than it is as the party of power…

One of Mrs Palin’s constant refrains when asked about giving up her office is that she didn’t want to practise “politics as usual”. Well, she can certainly be acquitted of that.