Thursday, October 30, 2008
After the Fall
The choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate was a desperate gamble which has backfired spectacularly. The novelty factor very quickly wore off, and the idea that throngs of Hillary supporters would flock to the McCain camp was always a delusion. The more the spotlight was shone on Palin's record, the uglier she looked. The tinpot dictator of Podunk-on-the-Tundra has a long record of corruption, nepotism, and abuse of power. She is truly the worst of both worlds: Bush's lightweight ignorance, incompetence and lack of experience and curiosity, combined with Cheney's arrogance, secrecy and lust for absolute power.
David Brooks was on the right track (for the only time in his life) when he said that Sarah Palin is a cancer on the Republican Party. The sad fact is that Palin is perfectly emblematic of today's Republican Party, with its contempt for experience, competence, ideas and substance, and its wallowing in stupid soundbites, anti-intellectualism and barely concealed racism. It is the Republican Party that is a cancer on the US political process.
Those who hail Palin as the future of the Republican Party are confirming that they want it to be the party of extremism, know-nothingism and fundamentalist radicalism in perpetuity. If there are any sane, decent Republicans left, they have an important choice to make in the coming weeks. Should they try to reclaim the soul of what was once, long ago, a party of principle and integrity? Or give it up as a lost cause and surrender the GOP to the barking religious lunatics and crooked sleazeballs?
The political landscape in the US is going to be fundamentally different very soon, and in a very interesting way!
One final thought: if the rethugs wanted to pick a strong, independent, courageous woman from Alaska, someone who was served her country with distinction, why didn't they pick Valerie Plame?
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