At least on a superficial level, at first glance, there's something satisfying about hearing Sarah Palin blast GOP "blue bloods" as (she was responding to criticism from Barbara Bush that she should stay in Alaska instead of running):
I don't want to concede that we have to get used to this kind of thing, because i don't think the majority of Americans want to put up with the blue-bloods — and i want to say it with all due respect because I love the Bushes — the blue bloods who want to pick and chose their winners instead of allowing competition.
But if you think about it for more than two seconds, you realize that Palin is full of faux-populist bullshit. Take, for example, her campaign against Lisa Murkowski. Sure, Murkowski was a "blue-blood" Republican who got her seat in the Senate thanks to nepotism. But Palin's answer was Joe Miller, a candidate who was even less popular than the "blue-blooded" Murkowski.
Palin did manage to help Miller win the nomination, but his win wasn't the result of a populist revolt: it came thanks to support from the corporate-funded Tea Party Express and high turnout from anti-choice voters. Then, once the general election came along, voters made it clear they preferred a "blue-blood" product of nepotism to a Palin-backed product of right-wing extremism.
And that raises a question: if Palin's version of "populism" can't beat nepotism, is it really populism?