Many people here ridiculed statements to that effect, and I am not quite sure how exatcly Wolf Blitzer, to whom the original is attributed, meant it (sorry, I don"t watch much TV). But in one sense the observation is perfectly accurate. It is a good bet after last night that win or lose in November, Sarah Palin is going to be a national political figure for a long time to come. She is the new national face of far-right religious conservative politics.
The religious fundies in St. Paul had a reason to cheer last night, whether or not they actually thought that Palin's speech will help McCain win. Maybe, just maybe they were not all that concerned about the short term just now. Maybe, just maybe, they don't even want McCain to win all that much.
Please, follow my thought experiment. It is always productive to start from the assumption that your opponents are not stupid, even if their politics are delusional. Maybe the leaders of the religious right know as well as most everyone else that McCain's chances of winning come November are pretty modest. Maybe they have already moved on. I happen to agree with those who think (like Ezra Klein over at prospect.org) that from a purely strategic perspective, picking Lieberman would have given McCain the most chance of winning. That's not because Joe is such a great speaker or effective campaigner, but simply because it would have greatly validated and reinforced some of the central claims of the McCain Camp. Just to mention a few:
- it could have been presented as a bi-partisan, country-first ticket, which many in the media would have run with;
- it would have underscored that national security is the central issue of the election, not the economy, a subject on which McCain has precious little to say.
- it would have hugely reinforced McCain's image as a "different kind of Republican", an absolute necessity when the Republican brand is so tarnished. Sure, it would have enraged the base, but this is precisely my point: the spectacle of a convention floor fight lead by discredited right-wing zealots against McCain could have been turned into an asset to gain swing voters.
Of course, this would have been risky, but then, did he have any safe routes to victory? He could have called the Religious Right's (henceforth, RR) bluff, and given that they are already discredited nationally (if not within the GOP), they hardly could have called for a boycott of the election, because then THEY would have had to carry the blame for losing for many years to come.
But why, then, you may ask, did they force Palin down McCain's throat? It's about the long view, and it's about WHO IS GOING TO BE BLAMED. My point is not that they actually share this assessment, but that they MAY share it and STILL think it's bad for them to have Lieberman on the ticket and good to have Palin instead. Let's suppose they agree that of all the widely discussed options, a McCain-Lieberman ticket would have the best chance to win against Obama-Biden. Let's assume they calculated that with Joe the GOP would have 30% chance to win while with Palin only about 20%. 30% is still not an awful lot, and the prospect of a McCain-Lieberman administration not all that attractive for them. Because what if that ticket actually won? Everyone, rightly, would have credited their victory with distancing themselves from the Republican brand, of which the RR is the dominant component, and there would have been an outside chance (very outside, I should think) that a McCain-Lieberman admin would have drawn some of the lessons of this and tried to somewhat loosen the iron grip of the RR on the GOP. Again, even if the chance of this happening was minor to begin with, they were suspicious of this happening.
I can hear the protests that McCain isn't really all that different, that it's all a myth, and that he shares 90% of their policy preferences. For all I know, all that may be true, at least as far as the McCain of 2008 is concerned. But this objection misses the crucial point. From the perspective of my argument, what's important is not whether liberals think McCain is just more of the same, rightly or wrongly (rightly, for the most part), but the way conservatives see him. It doesn't matter a bit what we think of him and his pandering. What matters is that for all that pandering, conservatives still don't see him as one of their own. They see his promises to them for what they are: pandering, and they still don't trust him. A McCain admin, especially with a non-conservative as VP, is frought with perils from their perspective. They would trade a 30% chance of a McCain/Lieberman admin for a 20% chance of a McCain-Palin admin any day.
How, then, does the McCain/Palin ticket look like in this conservative calculus? The reasoning must be something like this: If against the odds they win, then picking Palin will be seen as the turning point in the race, the RR will claim credit and at least they will have their agent at the very heart of the executive. If the ticket loses, as is more likely than not, it will be all McCain's fault. He can hardly go out and complain afterwards that Palin was forced on him. The RR can say that, rather than relinquishing conservatism, a return to purity is the solution. Plus, they will have Palin with national name recognition and four to eight years to train for her next turn.
Many people argued, and I agree, that Palin's speech last night did little to win over swing voters and everything to please the base. People, including Steve Benen at washingtonmonthly.com pointed out, again rightly (I hope), that it was more like the keynote address from an up-and-coming politician than a speech by someone campaigning right now for national office. That's right on target. The speech reminded me of Ronald Reagan's address to the 1964 GOP convention, which was meant to establish him as the darling of the nascent conservative movement rather than to help Goldwater win the presidency. Think about it: who is the face, right now, of the conservative base? Many people, to some degree, and no one in particular, and no one very attractive for sure. Mike Huckabee could have become it, but the Club for Growth crowd would never let that happen. At heart Mike is a populist and for all his faults he is just too decent as a human being to become the standard-bearer of the RR (just recall his reaction to the Wright-affair: his was about the only humane reaction on the right-wing spectrum). Palin, on the other hand, has a chance to unite religious conservatives and tax conservatives. Her abuses of power will look like old stories four, eight, twelve years from now, she will still be young, and she has all those years to establish her creds where she needs them most. She will be more careful under constant national media scrutiny than she has been so far, and yes, there is some of that hockey mom appeal that is notoriously absent from most contenders for the role of standard bearer for the RR.
Let's assume I am right about this, and the RR forced Palin on McCain in preparation for 2012 or 2016 rather than 2008. What's a liberal to do about all this? Well, I guess, at one level liberals should be pleased. We, more than anybody else, are convinced that the GOP failed not because of straying from conservative orthodoxy but because of sticking closely to it. If the conclusion the GOP draws from its much hoped for defeat this year will be that they must stick even closer to their first principles, then, electorally speaking, so much the better for us. At another level, of course, it would be healthier if the GOP itself were to turn to a more reasonable direction. But I guess that takes more than one humiliating defeat.
At the same time, we must do absolutely everything to make sure Obama/Biden wins this year!