The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Yes, your new fresh face, that down home Average Hockey MomTM turns out just to be twice the Mayberry and every bit the Machiavelli:
Aides to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin improperly obtained her former brother-in-law's state police personnel files and cited information from those records to raise complaints about the officer, the head of Alaska's state police union said Thursday.
"It's apparent to us that the governor or someone on her staff had direct access to his personnel file, as well as his workers' comp file, and those are protected," said John Cyr, executive director of the Alaska Public Safety Employees Association.
There are a million problems with naming someone as Not Ready for Prime Time as Sarah Palin to the ticket. But one that deserves more attention is the broader implications of her "it's not rocket science" attitude toward governance.
While it's a great applause line for the Republican Party faithful who hate government anyway, and who, frankly, have fallen a bit too much in love with anti-intellectualism, it's also indicative of the fact that she's grafted together the absolute worst possible aspects of several different brands of Republicanism.
She's never played in a world where there are real procedures that are in place for a real reason. She thinks everything's a PTA meeting, and she can just do what she wants, because she's the boss and everyone hates red tape. Fire town officials on a whim? Sure. Fire state officials on a whim? Well, sure. Though it turns out someone actually cares about process a little bit there. Still, it's Alaska! So who'll ever focus on it?
That attitude is, in part, derived from Tom DeLay-ism, which is itself just the greedy and overly-cavalier and dimwitted cousin that devolved from Gingrich-ism. Gingrich, for all his faults, understood at least some of the mechanics of government, and moved to implement his vision within their bounds to the extent possible. DeLay-ism, however, was unconcerned with formalities, and grabbed at power with both fists figuring no one would ask any questions of people in suits.
A more sophisticated cousin of DeLayism is Cheneyism. For all his flouting of the intent of the law, Dick Cheney and his top lieutenant David Addington he knew its letter, and that's what ultimately made it hard to pin him down and hold him accountable. Palin knows precisely nothing about it, and worse, doesn't think she has to. She things the trappings of office will bail her out any time she steps in it.
And the very, very worst thing about that executive branch Dick Cheny has spent the last eight years building is... she might be right.
But is there a more dangerous attitude in the world to plug into the Vice Presidency that Dick Cheney has created?
Imagine four to eight, or even 16 more years of Sarah Palin's Mayberry-Plus Machiavellianism, with every petty, personal vendetta firing defended on grounds of "national security."
Hell in the proverbial handbasket.
This was why Cheneyism needed to be nailed down during the Bush "administration." Having failed to stamp it out, we're now staring down the barrel of exactly what we didn't want: Cheneyism as precedent, in the hands of a fundamentalist cipher, programmed by GOPAC.
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