Stoopid Stuff

Sarah Smile

So what does the future hold for former part time governor and full time ideologue Sarah Palin? Well, it's a bright, if somewhat constrained future. Let's be clear about this. She is the queen of the 28%ers. The far right bigots, the tribal paranoids, the people who use the word "socialism" without ever bothering to look up what it means all love her. And when you are the figurehead for a political movement that constitutes by any reasonable metric close to 60 million people, people who will forgive you for any transgression and allow you any stumbling incoherence, you have a great opportunity not only to a life of cheering adoration but for great wealth.

Let's be clear. Sarah Palin offers the Republican party nothing. The base loves her, and will turn out with activists, phone banks and money. But she will bring not one single independent or fence-sitting voter over to her cause, for her message is so extreme and her qualifications so limited. She can raise money that they would have raised anyway, and bring out crowds that would have come out anyway, more out of Obama hatred than Palin love. She will keep their message on the front page, but with her political illiteracy, issue ignorance and odd, provincial cadence it won't be in the way they hope for.

Sarah Palin is a fool's choice for spokesman, and an even worse choice for political leader. As spokesman, she delivers nothing but derisive laughter and head-shaking confusion. As leader, she offers only a fair-weather leadership, and when things heat up and times get hard, well, we've learned her response this weekend. Only quitters fight. Fighters quit. Right. In the Republican black-is-white up-is-down world of political convenience and institutional incoherence, she offers a unique willingness to ignore not just reality, but logic in general.

So carry on, Sarah. Let your victim flag fly. Go proudly into that tiny, insular world of paranoid fear and hatred, rally the angry, scared white people to the cause of holding back the tide of history. Diversity and community is the future, so cling to fearful homogeneity and tribal animosities. Dwell in the past, glory in a time when anyone who wasn't a white man had no voice and no power. Of course, the fact that that was you, as a woman, is not to be considered. There is a constituency for your message of hate, ignorance and fear. But fortunately for the rest of us, it is small, regional and shrinking. And as you can only guarantee the ultimate failure of that message, you may actually turn out to have done some good...

posted by mikey @ 6:14 PM