Nick Gillespie at Daily Beast: Has Sarah Palin Turned Libertarian?

Over at The Daily Beast, I've got a new piece up about Sarah Palin's re-emergence on Fox News and in Republican Party politics.

Here's a snippet:

Over the past weekend, Palin was one of the main speakers at the 'Road to Majority" meeting of The Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group of religious Republicans headed up by Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. During her remarks (watch the full video at C-SPAN), she took partisan shots at President Barack Obama and his supporters in "their itty-bitty purple Volts" but she also sounded specifically libertarian notes, disdaining yet more intervention in the Middle East, giving absolution to Edward Snowden for leaking details of surveillance programs, and casting a pox on both Democrats and Republicans. "The problem," she explained, "is government grown so big that it intrudes into every aspect of our lives….The scandals infecting [the government] are a symptom of a bigger disease. And it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or a Democrat sitting atop of a bloated boot on your neck. With bloated government, everyone gets infected and no party is immune."

Palin got her biggest applause when she finished that thought by declaring, "That's why, I tell you, I'm listening to those independents, those libertarians, who are saying, 'it is both sides of the aisle, the good ol' boys in the party on both sides of the aisle, they perpetuate the problem.'"…

Yet there's every reason to believe that Palin's new-found libertarianism is deeply misinformed, cynically superficial, or some mix of both.

Find out why over at The Beast.