Talk aimed at dissecting where Governor Palin is and is not going on her Going Rogue book tour started as soon as she released the schedule. Talking heads have been bobbling with chatter about what they call an avoidance of big cities like New York and Boston. J. Robert Smith, in an American Thinker article, does some dissecting of his own.
While none of us can pretend to read the governor's mind, or know her future plans, he does offer an interesting assessment of her chosen tour stops. He calls it "Sarah Palin's Walmart Strategy."
What's notable about Sarah Palin's book tour, which starts midweek, is where she's not going. She's not going to L.A. or New York, Boston or San Francisco. She's going smack dab to the middle of the country. Fly-over country, liberals call it. And it's a shrewd move, not only in selling books, but positioning herself for a presidential run in 2012, if she chooses.
It's a strategy right out of the late Sam Walton's playbook: go where there's demand and the competition ain't. Walton, who could have run and won political campaigns, built Walmart into the behemoth it is today by opening his discount stores in small towns in the heartland, towns that the eight-hundred pound gorilla K-Mart ignored.
Walton conquered the discount retail category from the heartland out. He didn't so much as clobber K-Mart as steal a march on it. Palin may just prove that a heartland strategy does more than sell blenders and books. It's the foundation for winning a national election.
Make no mistake, right now, heartlanders (and heartlanders in spirit) are feeling awfully ignored by Washington politicians. The president and Congress are intent on ramming through a health care reform measure that an ever-increasing majority of Americans oppose. They're spending as if using someone else's credit card (in fact, the people's); they play Americans for dupes by calling an old-fashioned pork barrel bill an economic stimulus; and, for toppers, President Obama is playing Hamlet about Afghanistan, thus putting brave soldiers there at greater risk every day.
What Palin will bring to places like Noblesville, Ind., Washington, Pennsylvania, and Fort Bragg, N.C, is her brand of popular conservatism: upbeat, optimistic and certain. It really is an offshoot of the Reagan brand. And the Reagan brand has its roots deep in the American character.
[...]
Sam Walton once said:"Each Walmart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community."
The same holds true for politicians' relationships to citizens. It's not happening now in America. Sarah Palin has the opportunity to change that for the better.
Is it possible Governor Palin is employing Walmart's strategy of reaching out to heartland Americans whose needs had been largely ignored until then? J. Robert Smith says yes. Read his entire article here.
(h/t Ray - SarahNET.net)
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