Whatever else you might think about Sarah Palin, is there any other politician on the national stage who speaks the way she does? From her farewell speech yesterday, delivered in Fairbanks:
And getting up here, I say it is the best road trip in America, soaring through nature’s finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice-fogged frigid beauty. The cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime, such extreme summertime, about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now, with fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins. It is as throughout all Alaska, that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.
For all of you, like me, who don’t normally hear this talk, “Cheechakos” refers to newcomers to Alaska, and “Sourdoughs” to veterans of life in the state. “Denali, the great one” refers to Mount McKinley.
