The significance of Governor Palin’s speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville lies in the new facets it discloses of the emerging doctrine we call Palinism. We wrote of this in an editorial issued December 2. It marked Mrs. Palin’s willingness to let Israel decide how to regulate its settler movement, her statements in favor of a strong dollar and concern over the collapse in the greenback’s value against gold, and her recognition that the unemployment question is connected to the tax question. For all the eagerness of her critics to set her down as a lightweight, the early signs were of a view that is plenty sophisticated and full of savvy.

This was underscored in Nashville, where two themes caught our attention. One was on national security, in which she placed herself squarely in the war camp and in opposition to the view that the terrorist attacks confront us with a law enforcement problem. “Treating this as a mere law enforcement matter,” Mrs. Palin said, “places our country at great risks because that is not how radical Islamic extremists look at this. They know we are at war. To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.”

From the recognition that a war is being waged against us flows a lot of things, including a comprehension that peace overtures are not to be reciprocated. When an officer of the Third Reich parachuted into England in search of peace — we speak of Hess — he was thrown in prison for the rest of his life. When Horace Greeley got involved in an effort to find a peaceful settlement to the Civil War, President Lincoln was probably tempted to have him brought up for treason. Mrs. Palin did not make any such suggestion in respect of President Obama, but she did speak of the “misguided thinking that is seen throughout the administration’s foreign policy decisions.”

“Our President,” she said, “spent a year reaching out to hostile regimes, writing personal letters to dangerous dictators and apologizing for America, and what do we have to show for that? Here’s what we have to show. North Korea tested nuclear weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles. Israel, a friend and critical ally, now questions the strength of our support. Plans for a missile defense system in Europe, they’ve been scrapped. Relations with China and Russia are no better. And relations with Japan, that key Asian ally, they are in the worst shape in years.…”

A second facet of the Palin worldview to emerge in Nashville had to do with domestic issues. It was a reference she made to the last article in the Bill of Rights, the10^th Amendment, which says that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. The former governor of Alaska did not dwell on the point, but marked it well and good in a portion of the speech in which she aregued that Washington “has now replaced private irresponsibility with public irresponsibility.”

Said Mrs. Palin: “The list of companies and industries that the government is crowding out and bailing out and taking over, it continues to grow. First, it was the banks, mortgage companies, financial institutions, then automakers. Soon, if they had their way, healthcare, student loans.” She cited Congressman Paul Ryan on how “the $700 billion TARP has morphed into crony capitalism at its worst” and is “becoming a slush fund for the Treasury Department’s favorite big players, just as we had been warned about.”

The she noted that when Washington passed a $787 billion stimulus bill, “we were nervous because they just spent $700 billion to bail out Wall Street.” She said that on the state level, “as a governor, we knew a lot of that money came with fat strings attached. The federal government was going to have more control over our states. They were going to disrespect the 10th Amendment of our Constitution by essentially bribing us..…”

Her concern for the 10^th Amendment puts her in a camp these columns have been watching, as the founding editor of the Sun, Seth Lipsky, pointed out in a column issued here yesterday. It is a camp that, at a time when the federal government is reaching for unprecedented power, looks to the basic checks and balances of the Constitution, to the principle of limited, enumerated and separated powers, and to the importance of federalism. It is a view that references the basic contract between the states that is at the heart of our republic.

In sum, Palinism is starting to emerge as a worldview that includes a comprehension of the nature of the war, a respect for the sovereignty of democracies, an understanding of the relationship between high taxes and high unemployment and low taxes and low unemployment, an appreciation for sound money and a strong dollar, and a tendency toward constitutionalism. We’re a long way from endorsing a candidate for the next presidential election, but if this is what is emerging from a woman so many like to set down as a lightweight, it’ll be something to see what basic ideas emerge from her competitors.