If Republicans aren’t having buyer’s remorse and no small sense of terror at what they have wrought on themselves in Sarah Palin – they had better. I’m sure they put up with her because they like to see the loathing and flat our beshitting terror she evokes on the left. But she is being taken seriously by the cross-eyed base they worked so hard to nurture these last twenty years. She is a Frankenstein of the right’s own creation. And everything that comes out of her mouth – whether they like it or not – is being attributed to the GOP. When she puts words in Pat Buchanan’s mouth – and suggests that Obama might actually get re-elected if he plays The War Card, and go to war with Iran – something Sarah Palin says with the disconnected calmness another person might employ to order a pizza – even though it’s not true and Pat Buchanan suggested no such thing – people believe it. (As if being at war with five countries isn’t enough…)
There are very few places the Tea Party could have held their convention where their false narrative could be believed. Where Sarah Palin could make one hundred thousand dollars to victimize her audience with a voice that sounds like a dying hyena. Factcheck.org needs an entire division just for her. I know there are serious Republicans out there. They might be retired or drunk in some bar, but they do exist – and they would do their party a favor by standing in opposition of this type of politics: where truth is tossed aside and personal intolerance and fear is carefully nourished.
When Sarah Palin lashed into Obama for the Christmas Bomber, her story could just as easily have been describing the Shoe Bomber, who did try to attack our country when George Bush was in office. The system didn’t work then either. And, he, too, was tried in a civilian court. He too had a lawyer – just as he would have had he been tried in a military court. The only difference is that George Bush was a Republican and Barack Obama is a Democrat. And the Shoe Bomber turned out to be an American from Virginia instead of a black Nigerian. It is this double standard in politics that slows it to a crawl as both sides bicker over who did what as the big things that really need to be worked out go ignored. It was Bush who sat on his ass and ignored the pleas and warnings of the outgoing Clinton administration of the seriousness and danger of Al Quaida and Bin Laden. The notion that Republicans are better at prosecuting war and protecting us is just their own violent-spirited – and completely false – propaganda. If true, we wouldn’t have the same people plotting against us that were plotting against us ten years ago. Bin Laden wouldn’t still be out there and Mullah Omar wouldn’t still be out there. But they are. Republicans need to accept that their last leader sucked donkey balls and that the reason he was almost elected in 2000 because people wanted to have a drink with him even though he’s a teatotaler.
The Democrats might not be in power right now if the Right took themselves just a little more seriously. Running the country isn’t something that should be decided based on popularity. Just because some political retard from Alaska has nice legs and looks like an adolescent porn fantasy doesn’t mean she deserves a public platform to toss out complete unverifiable falsehoods. Just because some dude in Massachusetts claims he can fix Washington by cutting taxes across the board and he once posed nude in Cosmopolitan magazine doesn’t mean his name should be floated as a possible Presidential candidate before he even steps foot in Washington.
Now there are some things the Right does do better than the Left: obstruct, lie, cheat, steal, instill fear, declare their weaknesses to be strengths (fiscal responsibility my ass), wedge issues, grandstanding, civil liberty trampling, bigotry, laziness, false folksiness, bribe acceptance, paper shredding, torture, criminal negligence, corporate submissiveness, denial, Constitutional fuckery, naked aggression, brutality, illegal warfare, graft, greed, demagoguery – and stealing elections.
Whew! That wasn’t easy! Consider that my attempt at bipartisanship: complimenting the other side for their obvious strengths is something we probably need more of. So I might as well be the first.
Sarah Palin is not a pit bull in lipstick. She’s a human apocalypse: the very face of our country’s possible doom. And it’s time the GOP told her so. I nominate John McCain.