Palin’s endorsement seals the deal for Trump

The endorsement of Donald Trump by former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin (R) enters America into a new phase: a burgeoning new American rather than “global” human culture; a rising heartland ethic of rustic energy and faith in the everyman and woman and the Emersonian rediscovery of who we are, free and new again in nature. It is Andrew Jackson reborn; it is Jefferson reawakened.

{mosads}When Palin took to the podium in 2008 to accept the position of vice presidential nominee offered to her by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), America would go through a catastrophic shift. The Establishment media, including TV and Hollywood, attacked her at every turn, attacked her children, attacked and demonized those who supported her. She represented a systemic change occurring in conservative politics, but in reality it should not be called “conservatism,” and should not even be called “politics.” A sea change was occurring in America which would touch on virtually every aspect of American life, and she, coming out of the Alaskan wilderness, brought with it an ascending forest spirit.

In endorsing Trump, that spirit for the first time begins to take form. So many since 2008 have tried to take the mantle, but none fit, and many under a Tea Party anthem took the cloak of the new only to advance the oldest and darkest expressions of our nature. Today, the deal is sealed and Trump has pulled the sword from the stone.

The Republican primary has come to completion. Trump has won. There will be no surreptitious efforts to insinuate Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) into the race at the convention. There will be no moderate wing rising between. There will be no secret savior coming to snatch it away at the last moment. Trump has won.

And whoever wins this race next November will bring the century to its real beginning. The most apparent and cloying feature of the campaigns to date has been dangerous nostalgia; the failure by both parties to acknowledge the change of the century, retreating instead to the past, to the last century, the last millennium. The Clintons pitching a Machiavellian second “co-presidency” and the attendant generation with them refusing to let go of a past irrelevant to our present. The Bushes reach back even further, to a veterans base in a war 70-years past.

Today, Trump wins Iowa, wins New Hampshire, wins South Carolina, wins everything. It could not be more clear: Donald Trump is Alpha Dog. One can even now barely recall the names of the others on the stage with him. And he brings with him a vastly new approach. Perhaps one better suited to a century and a world that began on Sept. 11, 2001.

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.