This would be Peggy Noonan, famously a Republican, on Sarah Palin:

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough. …

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Here’s why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think. …

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It’s not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won’t be that way.

Granted, but - the temptation of resentment?

Palin personified resentment. Resentment is the glue that holds movement conservatism together. And this suggestion that conservatism needs leaders who “know how to think” - they resent that too. Dont’cha get it? Thinking is for elitists; thinking is a form of emasculation. This is the cultural populism of the conservative movment; Palin is its poster child, but she also signifies the dead end that it has come to.

Palin could always reinvent herself as an economic populist, as I think there will be a huge market for that in the future. But for all the cultural populism of movement conservatism, they still think like peasants - the people with all the money deserve to have all the money, and the rest of us ought to be happy with the trail of crumbs they create for us. That’s going to fade and die as the economic crisis continues, as it will. But can conservatism as a political philosophy acclimte itself to this? If Palin were to one day represent “the people” as in, the people versus the oligarchs - she could again be a major force to reckon with. So long as she stands with “the people” against the likes of elitist Michelle Obama with her yoga arms - she’s done. As is the movement that thinks this nonsense relevant in the first place.