Jon Stewart Is As Confused By Palin As You Are

This Saturday, prominent GOP figures convened in Des Moines, Iowa to make an impression before the state's caucuses in 2016. Several big names showed up to the conservative event, including Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, and Donald Trump. But it wouldn't be a complete GOP variety show without its star entertainer, Sarah Palin. The former Alaskan Governor delivered a speech so bizarre that even conservative pundits were giving her the side-eye. Luckily, one person has figured out what the hell she was talking about. Jon Stewart is here to explain Sarah Palin's speech.

At Saturday's summit, Palin first announced to the crowd that she's "seriously interested" in running for president in 2016, and then she launched into a speech that conservative magazine National Review called "meandering and bizarre," and what the rest of us would call "bat-shit crazy."

Here's an excerpt from her verbal diarrhea:

Things must change for our government. Look at it. It isn’t too big to fail. It’s too big to succeed! It's too big to succeed, so we can afford no retreads or nothing will change with the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo. Another Latin word, status quo, and it stands for, ‘Man, the middle-class everyday Americans are really gettin’ taken for a ride.’ That's status quo, and GOP leaders, by the way, y'know the man can only ride ya when your back is bent. So strengthen it. Then the man can't ride ya, America won't be taken for a ride, because so much is at stake and we can't afford politicians playing games like nothing more is at stake than, oh, maybe just the next standing of theirs in the next election.

Don't hurt yourself trying to find meaning in there. It's not worth it. Fortunately, Jon Stewart has done the work for us, and his explanation makes a whole lot more sense.

Before diving into the Sarah Palin crazy pool, Stewart highlighted some other key speakers at the event, like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Walker said, "If you're not afraid to go big and go bold, you can actually get results." To which Stewart said, "Isn't that the tagline for Tide? Well, this summit probably does get your whites whiter."

And Mike Huckabee deserves an honorary mention for his own crazy talk, which repeated the metaphor of sausages maybe one too many times. Stewart noted that he was probably just really hungry. Don't forget Trump, who is surprisingly a favorite among Democrats because every time he opens his mouth he reminds the world that he's unelectable.

But it doesn't get more unelectable than the star of the show, who Stewart saves for last, because her speech is the best.

Stewart plays a clip of Palin during her speech and it immediately becomes clear that she may have knocked back one too many spiked Big Gulps. But even so, she was hanging in there for a while until, as Stewart put it, "her subjects stopped talking to her verbs."

Stewart plays the above excerpt of Palin talking about the government and the status quo, and if reading it was already trippy enough, actually hearing her say it makes you feel like you're in a dimly lit jazz club in 1956 breathing in second-hand hash smoke from the other beatniks around you. Because it sounds like she's reading slam poetry.

But it's 2015 and she's making a political speech, so it's a little less OK. In fact, Stewart points out:

You know, that’s the kind of talk you normally hear right before the pharmacist says, "Ma’am, you’ve got to leave the Walgreens."

And even more aptly:

Now we know what it’s like to get cornered by Palin at an open-bar wedding.

Just when you think Palin has peaked, she surprises us. In another clip, Palin says:

To finally stop this overreaching bureaucracy, we get on offense and we drive in solutions, and we be bold.

Stewart, staring in disbelief, comments:

Sarah Palin doesn't believe in your liberal, elitist "grammar" and "syntax." She be bold!

At the end of his segment, Stewart has a revelation about Palin.

That's when it hit me. Incoherent, rambling, unintelligible, folksy idioms. She's not speaking at a political event. Sarah Palin trying to sell America a Lincoln.

Then it cuts to a clip of Matthew McConaughey in his Lincoln ad, then the actor's face gets superimposed with Palin's as she says:

Y'know the man can only ride ya when your back is bent. So strengthen it. Then the man can't ride ya, America won't be taken for a ride.

Oh my God. It really is a Lincoln ad. It may not be much, but at least we found some meaning in that nebulous darkness that is Sarah Palin's brain.

Watch the video below.

Images: Comedy Central