Sarah Palin’s elevation to the national stage nearly a year ago brought much excitement and hope to many of us who had long been frustrated with the inability of the Republian party to launch a leader capable of articulating the hopes and aspirations of We, The People.

Now that she has left that stage, we are leaderless, we are rudderless, we are without hope in the gathering gloom.

We need her–Sarah are you reading this?–or a leader of her stature now more than ever. Here’s why.

Sarah embodied the conservative leader we need whose job, nay whose calling, is, above all, to promulgate, to articulate, to teach and to defend the ideals of conservative thought to a country full of liberal hordes infesting the arts, the media, boardrooms, campuses and–shudder–inner cities. They will never listen to us–which is why you will never catch any of us alive in any of those forsaken places. And just between us, we all KNOW that those ideals we hold dear don’t really apply in places like that, and can’t really be communicated to people like that by people like us–if we thought otherwise, why aren’t any of us in those places? That is why we must never break our solemn pledge to stay as far from those citadels of iniquity as we can, lest we be polluted and lost to the cause.

But Sarah was different! She spoke for all of us–ON TV! And of course everybody still watches TV! That’s the only way to grab the hearts and, well the hearts at any rate, of the people who hate us so much! She gave us so much power, and so much visibility, and so much excitement, and so much fun rolled in–and the biggest and best of our mega-churches keep telling us that’s what’s most important, isn’t it?–that the Other Side just couldn’t help but join the parade. Best of all, we knew that with Sarah in front, none of us would ever again have to defend an argument or articulate a position or–gasp–maybe have to invite a smelly person into our living room to attempt civil persuasion (not that I would know, but I think that’s what I heard somebody call it once). How else can a minority like us ever hope to get our hands back on the throttle?

We failed her, of course. We should have helped her to get more air time so that more of the hordes would have noticed. Now she has left and we are lost. We are really sorry, Sarah. But when she relents and starts to have compassion on us once again, she will at least know where to find us: as always, as comfortable as conceivable, as far from the really really bad places as we can manage, as isolated from our neighbors as we can contrive, keeping our kids as far as possible from theirs, watching all the shows and reading, well, watching all the shows that make us remember how good we really are and how happy we could really be if only we had someone like her to lead us back into the only safe place, what that old prophet of doom* called the American dream of peace and affluency.

Somebody’s gotta lead us back. We weep for you now, Sarah, but we will be ready and waiting for you then.

*Francis Schaeffer. I should be ashamed to admit it, but I did read just a page or two once, back before I knew how the world worked. But it was really hard to understand anyways and a little scary to boot, so none of you need trouble your minds about it.