From the start the Netroots were on the right track with Sarah Palin. To quote Dave Letterman, "something smells." But now, after giving three interviews and answering approximately two impromptu media questions even many of her right-wing defenders are calling for her to bow out.
But let's not waste time with links to what you've already read (there's a lovely recommended diary detailing the latest), let's discuss what this means for the future of the GOP.
Sarah Palin was not picked in some mavericky last-minute move by McCain, despite what the Republicans I was talking to in the gym this morning believe. That story is nothing but a retcon to cover up the real story: John McCain is so out of his depth as a candidate for president this cycle that he had very little control over his VP choice.
The rumors are two-fold. One part of the story is that McCain wanted to pick Lieberman or what's his name, but was blocked by the far-right, who could not stand for a pro-choice VP on the ticket. The other part goes to the little-known "National Review" cruises. Yes, that's right, you can go on a cruise with wingnut authors. Where can you spend a couple weeks trapped on a boat with wingnuts? Alaska, where apparently at least one of these cruises enjoyed a teatime (really!) with none other than Sarah Palin, where the wingnut authors and their wingnut vacationers fell in love with her hard-right stances.
Although some conservatives are actually good people, intellectual people, principled people who just happen to disagree with us about how the country should be run. Markos once referred to them as "non-mendacious Republicans," a term I'm quite taken by. Sarah Palin is not one of those conservatives. She has been correctly termed "distilled wingnuttery." On issues such as climate change, she supports the views of paid oil company schills. On issues of foreign policy, she believes in hollow talking points unsupported, and largely unrelated, to reality. She is a bullying, lying, anti-intellectual, jingoistic fool. She represents the Michelle Malkin/Karl Rove wing of the GOP: a wing completely divorced from facts, one that believes that reality is what you say it is. She's less a politician than a member of the GOP base, a witless troll nodding in unison with Fox and Friends as they spoon-feed baseless accusations and factless opinions to each other.
This is the reason she was foisted upon John McCain. His "maverickiness" has never been popular in Greater Wingnuttia. It was the reason he was unable to excite the GOP base. She was chosen to excite the GOP base, and stem some of their down-ticket Congressional seat bleeding. And to run in 2012.
The GOP is well aware that McCain is going to lose. However, they would prefer he didn't take them all with him. The Palin pick gives them a scapegoat for the loss, John McCain (who they don't like anyway), and introduced what they perceive as the new conservative star who can woo disaffected Clinton voters and lead them to victory in 2012. It's not an uncommon tactic, and the only problem with it is that only a complete wingnut would take her seriously.
She is rife with scandals, including Troopergate (which while succesfully delayed during the election, will still become a matter of public record afterwars) and her many instances of graft and corruption. Her history of backstabbing, of mismanagement are becoming a part of her legend.
Palin has proven unable to give cohereent answers to fair questions from Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric, and even came across as weak during her Informercial Interview with the obsequious Sean Hannity. Her dependence on talking points and continued political illiteracy are worse than farce and all the more frightening given her statistical proximity to the presidency. But her gaffes were truly terrifying, so terrifying that reasonable conservatives are calling for her withdrawal.
She is a candidate only a wingnut could love, and they do. But the legacy, the albatross of the Bush Administration weighs heavily on the minds of the American people. It's a legacy that resonates and reinforces Palin's own problems, and rightly so. She is the candidate of wingnuts, and will never flag in popularity among them.
So thank God that the American people have noticed that "something smells," and won't give her a second glance in 2012. If Bush is the alpha and then she is the omega of the wingnut movement. They supported George Bush against the facts, the Constitution, and the interests of our country. They will support Sarah Palin with the same fervor when they run her in 2012, in a campaign that will be viewed as Quixotic at best. And that puts another nail in the coffin of the GOP as we know it.
Thank God indeed,
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