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Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, announced on Tuesday, may ultimately do more good for the person offering her support than the person receiving it. Once a major national figure and a candidate for the vice presidency, Palin has spent the last couple of years in relative exile, surfacing intermittently on cable news and in obscure reality TV programs.

It would be fitting if Trump managed to resuscitate Palin’s standing in the Republican Party. As Sen. John McCain's running mate in 2008 and as a tea party firebrand in the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Palin, Alaska’s then-governor, crafted a public persona that presaged Trump 2016 in its stew of nativist politics, television theatricality and unforced folksiness. She helped pioneer a style of mass-market Republican populism, and Donald Trump is walking in her mama grizzly tracks.