Strange stuff brewing these days - over at GQ Draper fills in some interesting tidbits about the continuing Palindrama.
Here is the original piece - GQ, others have already linked to this as well at HuffPost although it was Andrew Sullivan who highlighted the twist about the bus trip that spawns this diary's title.
There's more - in the vernacular - below the fold ...
When this election season really got into gear (back in 2007) and Obama's name came closer to the fore that, along with Hillary's prominence, assured that we were going to see history in the making. The country was ready for change, the question became, what change and to what degree.
Then Obama won the nomination, and clearly articulated to eager audiences, both here and abroad, the need for change. It was a powerful message of change and McCain's camp panicked.
Seeking to subsume that mantle of change, McCain chose Palin as his VP pick. Lowry, Rove and Kristol all had a collective swoon, followed by swift abandonment of their primitive urges. Yet, no matter how electrifying it appeared at the time, now even the campaign that elevated her seeks to spurn her. As evidenced by the section Sullivan excised from Draper's blog:
The Republicans who fawned over her superstar looks are now shocked—shocked!—to learn that her much-admired wardrobe has been purchased with RNC funds. I’ve heard from one well-placed source that McCain has snubbed her on one long bus ride aboard the Straight Talk Express, to the embarrassment of those sitting nearby.
You're either on the Bus or You're Off The Bus
Sometimes, you can be off the bus, even while you are on the bus.
Somehow though I feel there is even more in Draper's blog, something that was missed by Sullivan et al. It concerns the rapid rise and equally speedy fall Palin has experienced.
It has surely been implied to the governor that she should be eternally grateful to have been plucked from obscurity. And yet the high water mark of John McCain’s campaign for the presidency unquestionably began on September 3, when Palin gave her nomination speech—and ended precisely twelve days later, when McCain went off-script—I have that on the authority of the person who participated in the writing of said script—and told an audience that he still believed the fundamentals of the economy were strong.
Interesting, eh? The most notable of McCain's words this camapign, used against him to devastating effect by Obama, and they truly were not on script? Perhaps the old fella is also "off the bus" even while he sits on it's couch.
Certainly, it is another example of poor message discipline.
I'm going to add a few more thoughts to this - concerning which bus the Republicans now feel they ride within. Because, it is clear that the Auld Warrior and the younger Ice Huntress are sharing different trips, whether they sit a few feet apart, or are appearing on totally different stages. The point being that there is no going back for our opponents on the political stage. The logical end result of this election is a total flaying of the skin, dissection of their party. An eviscerating remake of their body politic.
When their campaign entered it's final round McCain had won against the "safe" religious candidate (aka Mittens) who also represented the brahmins, the elite wealth that has funded the GOP for decades. John McCain had also dispatched Huckabee, whose very name evokes Mark Twain and better times. Whose central beliefs however, belong somewhere closer to the middle ages, perhaps pre-Galileo on science, certainly pre-Darwin on evolution. Also left by the wayside (amongst the major contenders) was noun/verb/9-11 - all national security, all the time Rudy G. Sadly, as we now can see Rudy was really McCain-lite, not the other way around.
As the McCain campaign enters it's final stretch what does it offer for their party's future? Which bus is leaving the terminal? Or, perhaps a better question, how many buses are leaving? For I cannot see the different factions laid waste leading up to election's end existing together any longer. Once mutually dependent they are now mutually exclusive, even mutually repellent. If the Republicans were smart (coughs - I know, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) they would do the following:
-- banish the religious-right, the theocrats, from the Party - Palin, say bye-bye; Huckabee would surely have to get real with the 21st century or get out;
-- welcome into their ranks once again the libertarians they excluded and purged;
-- elevate those intellectuals they dismissed, dissed and otherwise diminished;
and if they don't?
They should expect nothing less than that the big money - the prime fuel of their political party - will leave, along with the brahmins who carry their purse. They should expect that the remaining few thinkers in their ranks will also leave them, for who wants to be in league with ignorant, divisive, racist yahoos? And, if money is the prime fuel, the spark of a political party is it's ideas. The Republican's are in short supply of original and effective thinking. Should they take such drastic measures, then the Republicans could return to relevance sooner rather than much later.
They would likely move to the center (having been way the hell out there on the right for far too long). Meanwhile the know-nothing anti-intellectual creationist wing can go and find their own party. Hey, they don't even have to think of a new name, simply assume "The Know Nothing" label as their own. Oh, and good luck with that approach.
Of course, they aren't going to do anything so sensible -because they never did grasp the meaning of being on any bus together in the first place.
You're either on the Bus or You're Off The Bus.