Palin, Bush, and the GOP establishment

Bill Kristol asks a philosophical question.

In any case, this is the same GOP establishment that rallied behind first-term governor George W. Bush in 1997-98 and then propelled him to the nomination in 1999-2000. Had Bush accomplished more than Palin at that point?

Yes, yes it is. And look where that got us.

Incoherence, with spit flecking rage on the side, please

The Palin/Santelli ticket.

Sure would be a winner. Nothing like a team that thinks there's a "real America" and an other America made up of losers and terrorist pals.

National Insult My Intelligence Tour 2008

That Bérubé fellow is back.

“Michael, please,” says my imaginary interlocutor. “You know perfectly well that even the ‘high-end conservative pundits’ will slurp down any old slop they’re fed by the party. That’s their job. It’s degrading and dehumanizing, sure, and a lot of them can’t face themselves in the morning anymore, but you have to remember that the pay is awfully good.”

“What about Bill Kristol?” I asked my imaginary interlocutor. “I mean, he’s the very most hackiest of the hacks, but he’s also the child of two serious conservative intellectuals. Do you think he has any morning sickness about Palin-shilling?”

“The thing about Kristol,” I.I. replied, “is that after he’s dead, we’re going to find out not only that he has no vital oils but that he has no internal organs whatsoever. No higher-order consciousness, no pineal gland housing the soul. What’s in there instead? Just balsam wood from tip to toe.”

Funny, huh?

Than, in Bérubésqué fashion, he makes a good point.

But then a non-imaginary interlocutor said a most interesting thing. (It was a dinner for twelve people, and I didn’t catch his name, or I’d tell you.) He pointed out that the right-wing culture war against pointy-headed intellectuals does not extend to the judiciary. On the contrary, he said, it’s as if they’re willing to run a cephalopod and a bag of hammers for the executive branch (I don’t think these were his exact words), but they actually recruit and train all their intellectual firepower for the courts (those were pretty much his exact words). And, of course, he’s right: Scalia, Alito, Roberts—these are all graduates from Pointyheaded Liberal Elite Law School, Evil Genius Division, and the glaring exception, Clarence Thomas, was a Palinesque conservative-affirmative-action fuck-you payback for the rejection of Elitist Evil Genius Robert Bork.

And the right-wing noise machine got the memo, too: witness the fact that everyone on the right, even down to bottom-feeding shriekers like Michelle Malkin, duly took up their torches and pitchforks when Bush nominated Harriet Miers. I was wrong, I realize now, to have called Palin Harriet Miers 2.0. Because Harriet Miers was ridden out of town on a rail, in a matter of days, by many of the same people who are now digging in, doubling down, and rooting hard for Palin against the mocking liberal elites. When it comes to the highest court in the land, these right-wing hacks don’t put up with no second- and third-stringers.

A blessed event

The op ed you should read this morning: Sarah Vowell.

I’m convinced that the immediate mass flip-out over the Palin nomination can’t be entirely explained by sexism, elitism or partisan animosity. It was a symptom of just how much the presidential future is a suspense movie scored by Bernard Herrmann. It’s enough of a nail-biter to throw in with a two-person ticket for four years. So if newscasters don’t even know how to pronounce the vice presidential pick’s name upon announcement, the violins of apprehension start to screech “Psycho” shower-scene loud.

The good news is that Governor Palin has sufficient experience in public life to leave behind enough of a paper trail that we can discern her positions on many of the most important issues of the day. The bad news is that after taking this crash course in where she stands, I know that if she were elected I would be afraid to leave my apartment after sundown.

During a gubernatorial debate in 2006, Governor Palin claimed that if her daughter, then 16, were impregnated as the result of being raped, Ms. Palin would hope that the girl would “choose life,” which is a polite way of saying she would expect a tenth-grader to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

Here’s a not-so-polite fact about the United States: According to Amnesty International, a woman is raped here every six minutes.

Like his running mate, Senator McCain has been a true-blue opponent of abortion rights during his political career. Unlike his running mate, he supports the right to terminate a pregnancy in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. So does President Bush. During a Republican primary debate in 2000, Senator McCain denounced Mr. Bush for being in favor of the exception but not having the guts to push for putting it in writing in the official Republican Party platform that year.

Swallowing the convention

I can take issues with some of it, but occasionally MoDo has a lucid moment and turns out a column that isn't merely a bizarre fantasy. Today was one of those occassions.

It seems like a long time since Vice President Dan Quayle denounced Murphy Brown for having a baby out of wedlock, bemoaning a “poverty of values.” It also seems like a long time — and another McCain ago — that Republicans supporting W. smeared the old John McCain by spreading rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

This week, the anti-abortion forces celebrated the news of Bristol’s pregnancy, using it as further proof that their beloved Governor Palin — who will no more support sex education than polar bears — was committed to the cause.

This is no longer a "chic flick" for her.

The Palin family feud

TPM has been following the Palin investigation since long before anyone had ever heard of her. Too much good stuff to lift passages, read the whole thing. Whatever it does for the evangelical vote, it was a deeply cynical, pandering, and reckless choice. She doesn't have the temperament to govern The United States.

Much like the top of the ticket.

At 11 a.m. on Thursday, at the McCain vacation compound near Sedona, Ariz., Mr. McCain invited Ms. Palin to join him on the ticket. He hardly knew her, and she had virtually no foreign policy experience, but Ms. Palin was a “kindred spirit,” a McCain adviser said. Mr. McCain was betting, the adviser said, that she would help him reclaim the mantle of maverick that he had lost this year.

He chose her to "reinforce his self-image." Sheesh.