Palin was a star too, enormously popular in Alaska. National campaigns are a different story.
But yeah, I'm an American - where I live the shooters party has seats in the most populous state and is slowly opening up land to public hunting.
I do think that simply copying the government services from this kangaroo kingdom would be a vast improvement on what the US has now - but I guess low unemployment, good working conditions, cost effective and quality medical care, secure retirements, and unemployment insurance for everyone aren't really what my countrymen in the US want.
No, we want freedom! As if being able to get a job and not worry about starving if you lose it are the opposite.
First of all, socialism sucks. Europe is pretty much proving that.
It sucks less in a country with a culture that is completely homogenous and already has a good work ethic. It takes time to break down that cultural work ethic. (e.g. Sweden and other northern European countries.)
Socialism will work the absolute worst in a country that is not homogenous (USA), has demographics with low levels of work ethic already (USA), has not had a major war to disrupt entrenched interest groups (USA), and has poor quality public servants (USA).
So, we CAN'T follow other countries' models for socialism because (a) socialism sucks and (b) it sucks even worse in the United States.
Why can I say that? We already have socialism. Pick any of the government provided services in this country and compare them, not to our private sector (which obviously does it better) but to any other mostly non-corrupt first world country. Public education. Agricultural subsidies. "Green Energy" subsidies. Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security disability.
Now, we don't yet have the widespread tax avoidance that much of socialist Europe already has. Try to implement that crap here and you'll find American ingenuity turned towards protecting what they have from the government rather than building the economy.