A letter to Sarah Palin

Given current national circumstances, watching voters turn away from the kind of leader we so desperately need is as sobering an event as the Alaska winter must be. Nevertheless, you ran an electrifying campaign under restrained and difficult circumstances. While your running mate garnered his comeuppance, you’ve energized conservatives throughout this land. There are tens of millions of Palinites out here very eager to do something.

Ominously, this election demonstrated that the Democrat machine has come to mimic the old U.S.S.R., in that it now reserves unto itself the right to lie, to cheat and to commit any act to further its own ends. Democrat tactics were on full display this time: American electoral probity be darned. There was voter registration fraud, ballot fraud, bureaucratic corruption, media malfeasance and ballot-count manipulation. They likely took millions in illegal donations, talked the economy downward and fiddled with the stock market too. It was a perfect feast of “coincidences” for them. While most Democrats are misguided, some are plainly evil.

Democrats and too many Republicans are now running this train on the same track in the same direction, which makes any operational differences inconsequential and moot. Liberalism would have nothing to plunder if conservatism did not build it first. It’s past time for prudent conservatives to get real. Moderate Republicanism has become nothing more than political elevator music. You hear it, more or less, but it never moves you to hum along. It’s never that song you can’t get out of your head all day. Moderate Republicanism comes coated with Teflon — it’s just non-stick political white noise.

Rush Limbaugh notes that any organization that does not have conservatism as its founding and guiding purpose will, in time, become liberal. Ronald Reagan often joked that earlier in his life he hadn’t left the Democrat Party, that it had left him. Reagan’s lament could now include a sizable segment of the Republican Party.

All that America ever was and is supposed to be seems to be quietly drifting away like smoke trails in the night sky after a Fourth of July fireworks display. Capitalism, the beleaguered U.S. Constitution, common sense, granddad’s America and conservatism are long overdue for a bailout.

What we have here is a Republican house full of irreconcilable differences. Therefore, it’s imperative that Republican liberal-lite moderates and squishy-spined country-clubbers be abandoned to go their own way. The distinction between right and left must be made sharp, clear and unequivocal. If America is to stand a chance — provided it’s not already too late — then conservatism must be unencumbered to stand free on its own honest merit. The GOP has reached critical mass. Let good, old-fashioned conservatism be the detonator.

Governor Palin, with the greatest of urgency, please consider a very public exploration toward forming a new national conservative party. Conservatives love you. The left — regardless of party affiliation — fears you. America needs you. One of life’s most fruitful maxims is that it never hurts to ask. So, governor, ask away. Pull a Reagan on them. Go online straight to the people. Explore the organizational practicalities and possibilities for this idea. Conservatives are hungry for their prophet. I’ll bet they’ll pledge to you $100 million in the first month in spite of the economy.

In a moment just made for a genuine American maverick, nothing may be as powerful as a Palin whose time has come.

John Knapp Jr.

O’Brien, Fla.