Palin Top Political Talent Since Reagan, Expert Angelo Codevilla Says

Wednesday, 06 Oct 2010

By: Dan Weil
Sarah Palin commands a political ability unrivaled since President Ronald Reagan, says an international expert who believes that the dream Republican presidential candidate for 2012 would be a combination of Palin and Newt Gingrich.

“Of course, that’s impossible, but one can only wish,” Angelo Codevilla tells Newsmax.TV.

“Sarah Palin is a political talent we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan,” says Codevilla, who has been on the staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is a professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University.

Meanwhile, Gingrich’s strength is that the former House speaker is a brilliant and good man, says Codevilla, author of the new book “The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It.”

Americans are divided into the “ruling class” and the “country class” — old English terms meaning the haves and the have-nots, the professor says. Palin belongs firmly to the country class, he says.

Story continues below video.

< Boston University professor Angelo Codevilla explains why the bitterness between the Reagan and the Bush administrations was even greater than those between Republicans and Democrats The author discusses his new book The Ruling Class How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It

The ruling class dominates the government. Codevilla says. “It believes that we who are attached to the government are priests of science and have a right to dominate the unscientific mass of Americans who don’t understand,” he says. “Attitude is key.”

The government simply doesn’t respect its citizenry, he says.

Regular citizens feel increasingly divided from those who govern them, Codevilla says. “The American people realized at the time of the bailouts that there was no division among party elites over measures that three-quarters of the American people opposed,” he says.

“Not only could you find no support for the American people’s positions among bipartisan elites, but these elites refused to give reasons why they were doing the things they did. They assumed people didn’t have the right to ask.”

The government has been disenfranchising its citizens since the 1930s, Codevilla says. “The American government has slipped out of the hands of the American people and has been lodged largely in the hands of administrative agencies,” he says.

“We aren’t ruled by rules that Congress makes. We’re ruled by decisions of unelected bureaucrats.”

So what’s the solution?

“There’s a need for Americans to take back their government not just by throwing out the rascals, which is the easy thing to do,” Codevilla says.

Rather, the United States first must slash the size of its government, and second and more importantly, subject officials at administrative agencies to election.

There is a difference in how the lack of respect for citizens plays out between the parties. “The Republican Party is sharply divided between the old guard, who are very much part of the ruling class, and their voters. The Democratic Party is quite united.”

Only 25 percent of Republican voters feel that their leaders are serving them well, Codevilla says.

The split between Republicans and Democrats exists mostly among the electorate, he maintains. “Republicans and Democrats in Washington are pretty much birds of a feather.”

As for the tea party movement, the resistant Republican establishment could prevent it from gaining ascendancy, he says.

The GOP establishment did all it could to crush Reagan and Barry Goldwater, Codevilla says. After the election of George H.W. Bush to the presidency in 1988, “Traditional Republicans got rid of the Reaganites faster and much more bitterly than Democrats would have,” he said.

And today, “The divisions between the New York State Republican establishment and someone like [gubernatorial candidate] Carl Paladino is much greater than the division between Republicans and Democrats.”