Right Wing Nut House

“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.” - Voltaire.

Matt Taibbi this morning:

At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

I must confess to the occasional foray into this kind of political “debate.” In a sense, it is irresistible. It gets tiresome writing about real issues, personalities, and “things that matter,” so a little devolution into the culture wars is sometimes just the thing to garner readers, get links, and start a lively conversation in the comments.

But is it really all a “distraction?” Many times, Americans argue by “substitution,” not able to finger exactly what it is that troubles us, and rather than explore the real reasons for our differences, use proxy issues instead. This convention is most pronounced when we try and talk about race, or more basically, our different worldviews. Most Americans don’t call out an opponent by screaming at him, “You Hegelian harlot! How dare you formulate your opinion based on the notion that Marx was right about religion being the opiate of the masses!” Instead, we just scream, “Socialist!” or “Fascist” at one another.

Is the “birther” argument a substitute for being uncomfortable about Obama’s race? Some would argue this is so. I think it deeper than that, going to the notion that Obama is so different from past presidents, not just racially, but his entire upbringing. He just isn’t like “us.” And since Americans like to think that presidents, regardless of party, share at least some of their “values,” it is much safer to argue that such a different man as Obama has no business being president because he wasn’t born here, or isn’t a “natural born” citizen.

Here, Taibbi really nails Palin to a cross:

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

Palin — and there’s just no way to deny this — is a supremely gifted politician. She has staked out, as her own personal political turf, the entire landscape of incoherent white American resentment. In this area she leaves even Rush Limbaugh in the dust.

The reason for that is that poor Rush is an anachronism, in the sense that his whole schtick revolves around talking about real political issues. And real political issues are boring.

Of course, Taibbi saying nothing that you haven’t read here - although, Damn! I wish I had come up with the “IQ of a celery stalk” jab first. But if you were to go to the comments below my recent PJM article, you would note that the overwhelming majority are not only Palin defenders, but that this strain of “resentment” - toward liberals, RINO’s, “elites,” or “the establishment” - colors their thinking to a degree not found anywhere else in American politics.

The left has its loons, for sure - rabidly partisan ideologues with the sense of humor of a Kangaroo and the ability to think independently of a locust. Their prejudices, however, are quite local; conservatives, Republicans, and the goober chewing, bible thumping, gun toting, rubes who live in flyover country.

But Palinites are universal resenters. I don’t think I’d go quite so far as Taibbi and bring race into the picture, but clearly these are “traditional Americans” who see the country changing politically, demographically, ethnically and are very uncomfortable about it. Palin, by speaking to their fears on a gut level, offers a refuge of sorts from the storm; reassuring those who need it that they are not alone, that there are others who share their fears.

They will tell you it’s all about “socialism” but these same folks didn’t seem to mind much when Bush pushed the prescription drug benefit, or the huge federal interference in education represented by the No Child Left Behind legislation. If Bush had gotten half the resistance on NCLB as these folks are giving the Democrats on health care, the education monstrosity would have died in committee.

I will admit that nationalizing the health care industry is a different kettle of fish altogether as is cap and trade, and card check. Government taking over 1/6 of the economy with consequences for personal liberty that can only be dimly glimpsed should be opposed. But Palin’s “death panels” demagoguery is proudly pointed to by her supporters as a “turning point” in the debate. Why fear mongering should be cause for celebration is beyond me, unless one is so besotted with ideological hatred of the opposition that reasoned debate over the many, many awful parts of the bills in question isn’t even considered.

As Taibbi points out, “reason” has got nothing to do with it:

Sarah Palin is on an endless crusade against assholes. It’s all she thinks about. She doesn’t really have any political ideas, in the classic sense of the word — in fact the only thing resembling real political convictions in Going Rogue revolve around the Trans-Alaska pipeline and how awesome she thinks it is.

Most of the rest of the book just catalogs her Gump-esque rise to national stardom (not having enough self-awareness to detect the monstrous narcissistic ambition that in reality was impelling her forward all along, she labors in the book to describe her various career leaps as lucky accidents or mystical acts of Providence) and the seemingly endless parade of meanies bent on tripping her up along the way. The book is really about her battles with these people, how much they did and do suck, and how difficult and inherently unfair life is for a decent hardworking American gal who just wants to live life, serve God, and try to be president without being bothered all the time.

Viewed through the prism of this particular brand of insanity (Palinsanity? does that work?), Katie Couric’s notorious Palin interview last year really was a cheap shot. After all, Katie was trying to nail Palin — which is mean! Who among us can’t sympathize with the experience of being sandbagged by some slick professional rival who catches you in a moment of weakness and, instead of lending a helping hand, drives a fireplace poker through your eye?

Palin has complained vociferously about press treatment of her. I agree it has been abominable, the worst, the most biased, the meanest I’ve seen since Nixon. The next question; “So? You expect you can do anything about it by whining?” Pointing a finger at the nattering nabobs of negative coverage has been tried already and only increased the venom. Smart politicians learn to ignore the slings and arrows of the press (or allow their partisans to defend them) while staying above the crap being tossed about by the likes of the NY Times or WaPo.

Taibbi is much meaner to Palin than I have been although many of his points are spot on. But unless she can somehow convince the Republican party that her appealing to our inner demons is the key to victory, she will continue to hover around 20% in the polls.

Don’t bother looking for it because you won’t find any other report on this shindig anywhere else. The Ball was held in the bowels of the National Archives where artifacts like the alien spacecraft that crashed at Roswell are housed, along with Obama’s REAL birth certificate (he was actually born in Hoboken, NJ), and proof that Glenn Beck is a paid agent of Chinese intelligence sent to turn American conservatives into a bunch of weepy little girls.

The fact is, this was a top secret Halloween party sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and DIA - the real spooks. So well planned was this operation, that the FBI was engaged to run a counter-op; a full dress party at the Washington Hilton that featured 200 Special Agents who impersonated famous politicos in disguise. The press knew something was amiss because the partygoers didn’t drink half of what professional politicians imbibe when out on the town. But only a couple of bloggers - me and a gay mommy blogger whom I will not link to, figured out that the Hilton party was a scam.

Sure enough, my faithful Capitol Hill source came through for me once again. This source has fed me information in the past that allowed me to break several important stories such as the scoop I had about Nancy Pelosi’s tryst with Rush Limbaugh at the Fairmont in San Francisco, as well as the hot story I did on the Jay Rockefeller cross dressing episode at a football game in Morgantown (he was dressed as a WVU cheerleader). Now he has given me the low down on this Halloween soire.

I cannot vouch for the total accuracy of what follows. But here is the report from my trusted source on various Capitol Hill personalities who attended the Ball.

I will give you three guesses what Nancy Pelosi was costumed as and the first two don’t count. Yes, but not just any witch. Pelosi came decked out as the Wicked Witch of the West complete with real Ruby Slippers (supplied by Andy Stern of the SEIU). On her arm, a real Winged Monkey - or maybe that was David Obey.

Robert Byrd came as a ghost. The sheet he had over his head looked very old - as if he had used it for something else many years ago. The hood he wore was also quite striking. Black people were giving him funny looks all night long.

Harry Reid showed up in a Sweeney Todd costume. Many thought the scalpel he openly brandished had something to do with health care reform, although nobody took the Majority Leader up on his offer for a haircut.

Chris Matthews came dressed up as a lapdog. He was cute as a button - until he started to hump the legs of most of the females present. Urinating on every Republican he got close to did not endear him to partygoers either.

John Boehner wowed the assemblage with his costume - a striking representation of a eunuch. Like most of the Republicans, he got way too drunk and ended up at the close of the evening in a corner crying it was no fair that Mitch McConnell stole his idea for his costume. He thought of coming as a castrated pansy ass first.

New Gingrich, as befitting his status as a potential presidential candidate, came costumed as Ronald Reagan. There were 30 other Republicans dressed as The Gipper, all swearing they believed in RR’s agenda, and were loyal to his memory - at least for the night, anyway.

Barney Frank was impressive in his ACORN costume. But he bitched all night about the fact that all the other nut costumes had already been rented by the time he made it to the costume shop.

Michael Steele wore an unusual costume - the Headless Horseman. Nobody got it.

Keith Olberman was dressed as R.P. McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Or perhaps he was wearing that strait jacket for real. No one had the courage to ask.

Glenn Beck’s Little Miss Muffett get up was an inspired choice. He wept when he finished 2nd in the “Best Costume” contest.

Mike Huckabee was pretty scary in his George W. Bush mask. Or was it a mask?

Who was that politician dressed as a wolf in sheep’s clothing? No one is sure and the Secret Service Agents who surrounded him all night weren’t talking. Whoever it was, he had an aide that followed him around all night with a teleprompter.

There was no mistaking Joe Biden who came dressed in the same costume he wears every year; Bozo the clown.

Sarah Palin was lovely as the Queen of Hearts. She seemed to relish screaming at the top of her voice “Off with his Head!” at every Republican she believed wasn’t conservative enough. I think she was joking.

John McCain was great in his horse costume. Too bad the disguise got all turned around so that the back of the horse was what everybody saw. He kept insisting he was a “Maverick” except the only person who agreed with him was Arthur Sulzberger who showed up in a Leonardo De Caprio costume from Titanic.

A good time was had by all, I’m told. Winner of the “Best Costume” went to Rham Emanuel who looked truly spiffy in his Godfather suit. Funny, but by the end of the night, there were considerably fewer administration opponents around than when the party started.

They’ll turn up eventually - I think. Might I suggest dragging the Potomac?

I don’t get it. What earthly good is it doing, raising the issues surrounding the candidacy of Sarah Palin for Vice President among the “professionals” who ran John McCain’s horribly mismanaged campaign?

I put pros in quotes because this latest dust-up is all about the gigantic egos of the principles in this scrum - a quite unprofessional attitude that helps no one except the opposition . And also because the McCain campaign will go down as one of the worst managed campaigns in history, rivaling Michael Dukakis’s nightmare of a run and the quixotically inept campaign of George McGovern.

But it is mostly ego driving Bill Kristol, Schmidt, Scheunamann, and the rest of the losers who refuse to stand up and say “I blew it.” Admittedly, such an admission is hard to make when one’s reputation, and hence, livelihood, is based on success at the polls. But you don’t have to be a brilliant strategist to see that the McCain campaign was poorly managed - slow to respond to the day-to-day jousting with the Obama team, not to mention a questionable overall strategy, curious ad buys, poor decisions on staffing state offices, and a host of other missteps that doomed McCain almost from the start.

And that’s not even mentioning Sarah Palin. Readers of this site know that when she was chosen, I was jubilant, believing it was a real game changer. But subsequently, it became painfully obvious that not only wasn’t she ready for the national stage, but the way the McCain camp was “handling” the Alaska governor guaranteed that her inexperience would remain an issue for the entire campaign.

Stacy McCain refuses to come out and say Palin wasn’t ready, but in her defense, he blames everyone else for Palin’s own missteps:

Palin would have been solid gold in any impromptu encounter with reporters on the campaign trail. Putting her into one-on-one interviews with the network anchors — eager to draw blood with “gotcha” questions — was a stupid blunder on the part of the campaign.

To schedule those interviews, and then to arrange sessions to “prepare” her for them, was to imply that she was incapable of handling the interviews without the “expert” assistance of the Team Maverick brain trust which, of course, had committed her to these interviews in the first place.

Am I the only one who sees that the problem with how Palin was “handled” had nothing to do with Palin and everything to do with the handlers? She is being made the scapegoat for the failures of others.

Stacy knows full well that running on a national ticket is not a game for the inexperienced. It is absolutely true that Palin was “mismanaged.” But the Couric interview showed that no amount of managing or coaching would have helped. She was as green as grass and Couric bored in as any experienced interviewer would have. Is Stacy saying that it is Couric’s fault that she asked questions that just about any experienced politician would have been able to finesse but that Palin couldn’t handle?

Palin was indeed, inexperienced and not ready for the Big Show. There is nothing wrong with her innate intelligence. She’s no dummy and has shown that when’s she’s well briefed, she can more than hold her own in debate.

But it takes more than brains to demonstrate readiness for national office and more than a good briefing to have a handle on issues. Palin wasn’t only inexperienced in dealing with the national press. Her biggest lack of experience came from not having immersed herself in the nuance and details of policy, personalities, and politics - a failing that she will no doubt correct if she is going to run in 2012. Such immersion gives depth to a politician’s personae and authority to their words.

Palin will do better if she runs again. But she won’t be able to lose the “diva” label unless Kristol, Schmidt, et al stop talking about the campaign as if it were all about them. Their incompetence elected Barack Obama and gave us the dumbest, densest Vice President in history (Funny no one does a hit piece on the horribly gaffe prone Joe Biden and his friends in the credit card industry who have made him a wealthy man.) And yet, here they are, snarling, sniping, and acting like 12 year old little girls at a slumber party who break off into little cliques dishing dirt on someone across the room:

“Steve Schmidt has a congenital aversion to the truth,” Scheunemann said. “On two separate and distinct occasions, he speculated about about Governor Palin having post-partum depression, and on the second he threatened that if more negative publicity about the handling of Governor Palin emerged that he would leak his speculation [about post-partum depression] to the press. It was like meeting Tony Soprano.”

Schmidt said Scheunemann’s charges were “categorically untrue.”

“It is inappropriate for me to discuss personnel issues from the campaign,” Schmidt continued. “But suffice it to say Randy is saying these things not because they’re true but because he wants to damage my reputation because of consequences he faced for actions he took.”

Schmidt is alluding, without saying so directly, to the stories that emerged after the campaign that Scheunemann had been fired.

Scheunemann said Schmidt did try to fire him but added: “I’ve got a pay stub through November 15th.”

The questions about Scheunemann being terminated are central to the larger battle about who was trashing Palin, something that quickly came to the surface in the back and forth between Schmidt and Kristol on Tuesday.

All of this came about as a result of an article in Vanity Fair about Palin that is so bad, much of it has to be a lie, or at least an exaggeration. No human being I know is as bad as the portrait painted of Palin in that article. No one could achieve the success she has in her career if she was truly as monstrous as the person described.

But beyond the description of Palin, one wonders why now? Why a hit piece more than 3 years before the election?

Two reasons come to mind: 1) Palin is such a polarizing figure that anything written about her sells copy; and 2) There is a growing recognition among liberal elites that Obama is heading for a one term presidency unless they can destroy each and every Republican challenger who emerges.

It’s no accident that the name “Carter” is being whispered more and more around Washington to describe Obama. Stimulus isn’t working, debt is skyrocketing, people may like Obama but support for his policies is tanking, largely due to the realization of how much his programs are going to cost us.

Republicans are liked even less but individual politicians are ranked much higher. Trying to destroy Palin, Romney, Huckabee, and anyone else who may emerge in the coming months could be the only way Obama gets a second term.

Why Kristol and Schmidt think the Democrats need a hand in that process is a mystery.

A fascinating discussion on the internets today about conservatism. It dovetails nicely with my post from yesterday  and with J.R. Dunn’s great blog post in American Thinker where JR talks about conservative elites and how out of touch they are with the heartland:

We need to know the precise reasons why too many of the core commentators of our movement turned on Sarah Palin. That is the only way that we can discover if the situation can be salvaged. What we’ve heard so far is only part of the truth, at best. The response to Palin by such figures as Brooks, Frum, Brookhiser, Buckley, Parker, and Noonan (Krauthammer and Will have been considerably more rational, if still mistaken) has been the farthest thing in the world from reasoned. It has been vicious and feral. People do not react to a merely disagreeable political figure in this manner. All the individuals I mentioned, including Krauthammer and Will in this case, have attacked the McCain/Palin ticket with more ferocity than they have Barack Obama, the most socialist presidential candidate since Henry Wallace. This requires an explanation.People react that way only to threats. We have to know precisely why the conservative elite is threatened by a successful conservative governor to the point that they have completely lost their bearings. The reasons we’ve heard so far are nonsense — you don’t call a woman a “cancer” because she says “like” too much or wears flashy shoes. If these questions are not answered, then we will be obliged to formulate our own.

My opinion is no mystery to readers of this site — that the urban conservative crowd is frightened of Palin because she represents a threat to the standard model of conservatism constructed since the wilderness years of the 1930s, in which a highly-educated and well-connected East Coast coterie led a much larger, less-informed heartland contingent. This, like it or not, is elitism. By their very nature, elites tend to corrode over time. And Sarah Palin, through the very fact of her showing up, has revealed this to be the case in our circle. She upset the enclave conservative applecart, and now they are angry — a lot angrier than they have been at any lefties in recent memory.

Well, applecarts are made for upsetting — they must be knocked over from time to time, to assure against smugness, arrogance, and decay. You can’t simply decry events like this — you have to learn from them. That is what our little elite is refusing to do. And that tells us all we need to know.

What JR is talking about is what Ross Douthat of The Atlantic Monthly calls a Conservative “Cocoon:”

Just to clarify: Sarah Palin’s Alaska is not the conservative cocoon. Neither is Tim Pawlenty’s Minnesota, or Mike Huckabee’s Arkansas, or any other place out in flyover country where a populist conservative became a popular and successful governor. The cocoon is the constellation of mutually-reinforcing conservative institutions - think tanks and advocacy groups, talk-radio shows and websites - that can create the same echo-chamber effect that the liberal media has long produced, and that at times makes it difficult for the Right to grapple with reality. The cocoon is the place where it took an awfully, awfully long time for conservatives to admit that the post-2004 crisis in Iraq wasn’t just a matter of an MSM that wouldn’t report the good news. The cocoon is the place where conservatives persuaded themselves, in defiance of most of the evidence, that the reason the GOP lost Congress in 2006 was excessive spending, and especially excessive pork. And today, the cocoon is the place where conservatives are busy convincing themselves that Sarah Palin’s difficulties handling high-profile media appearances aren’t terribly important, that her instincts are more important than her grasp of national policy, and that the best way to defeat Barack Obama is to start with the lines that Palin has used on the stump - Ayers, anti-Americanism and ACORN - and take them to eleven.So when I say that a populist conservatism needs elites, what I really mean is that it needs elites who can step outside this cocoon and see national politics more clearly - whether they work for conservative outlets, MSM outlets, or something else entirely. This is not, I repeat not, a matter of listening to Beltway conventional wisdom instead of the practical wisdom of the heartland. It’s a matter of recognizing political realities, instead of denying them outright - whether you’re in DC, New Hampshire, or Wasilla. The Sarah Palin who ran for statewide office in Alaska appeared to understand this, which is why she seemed like such a promising figure to me months before McCain selected her: As governor, she was conservative and pragmatic, right-of-center and

anti-ideological. The trouble is that since she’s burst on to the national stage, she’s entered a right-wing world that’s bent on, well, cocooning her - telling her how great she is regardless of whether she gets up to speed on policy and handles Katie Couric’s questions, feeding her lines that appeal primarily to the segment of the electorate that’s already in conservatism’s corner, and calling out anyone who criticizes her as a cocktail-swilling elitist.

Mark Steyn has a slightly different take on this “cocoon.” In fact, Steyn was responding to Ross Douthat’s post explaining why the grassroots “need” elites. Douthat (whose recent book The Grand New Party lays out a conservatism that is more populist and thus able to appeal more to America’s working class) wrote above that Steyn misunderstands his idea of a “cocoon” but I’ll let you decide.

Steyn:

Yet, in contrast to other industries, our chattering classes are uniquely concentrated in Ross Douthat’s DC/NY corridor. Isn’t this a little odd? And doesn’t it pose particular problems for Republicans? Conservative elites live in liberal jurisdictions - and, way out back in the “conservative cocoon”, it gives them the whiff of absentee landlords, who enrich themselves on the strength of various holdings in ramshackle colonies but have no desire to spend much time there. Whatever one feels about what Ross Douthat calls the “conservative cocoon”, it elects conservative mayors, conservative school boards, conservative road agents, conservative state reps, and conservative governors: it’s the only place to go to experience conservatism as applied in practice. On the other hand, Mr Douthat’s aforementioned corridor will once in a while elect a Michael Bloomberg or a Christie Whitman, and that’s it: conservatism remains strictly a theoretical proposition.That’s why the metropolitan sneers about the size of Wasilla were extremely ill-advised, and not just because of the implication that the mayors of, say, New Orleans, San Francisco or Detroit are therefore more qualified to be in the White House. If it weren’t for small towns, suburbs and rural districts, there would be no conservative government at all. With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), “blue states” mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California). Almost by definition, an effective conservative executive - the kind you might want in the White House - can only come from flyover country.

So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he’s mocking conservatism as it’s actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter.

I think Steyn is being slightly unfair to Ross - especially at the end of his missive where he skewers the East Coast elites:

As for Sarah Palin, I think she could use a fewer sharper moose gags, but I’m not sure David Brooks is the go-to guy for that. And, to return to his Charlie Rose “Barack is the mountain” shtick, any PBS-watching inbred stump-toothed knuckle-dragging plaid-clad mountain man not yet face down in the moonshine or enjoying a bunk-up with his sister might think that Mr Brooks’ bizarre metaphor gives the game away: the “conservative cocoon” is somewhere you drive through en route to the hiking trip.

So what gives? Is Douthat right? Has conservative media - blogs, talk radio, and the small but influential mags like NRO and Weekly Standard - created an “echo chamber” where our supposed intellectual betters on the coasts can step outside this “cocoon” and tell us the “political truth” about Palin or any other conservative?

Or are JR and Steyn on the button? Are our “elites” out of touch with real conservatives in flyover country and they are simply scared of looking like rubes to their liberal friends?

Allow me to referee this dispute and call a foul on both sides while awarding points to both sides as well. (And if that makes me a straddler, so be it. I happen to believe that both sides make excellent points.)

The roots of this dispute are as old as conservatism itself; elites (the best among us rising as a result of their own talent and efforts) versus what we might call “the levelers” - those more egalitarian conservatives who distrust any aristocracy be it the result of birth or one’s own efforts. For lack of a better label, let’s term these conservatives “populists” (although many would probably reject that label because its historical baggage).

The friction between the two sides is obvious. What has brought it to the fore now is distrust. There is more trust in a roomful of thieves today than there is in a room full of conservatives. And Palin is the focal point where both sides seek to measure the other’s conservative bona fides. The populists see most criticism of Palin coming from elites as signs of squishiness. They believe (rightly) that the elites have no idea how embattled they feel. To many in the heartland, this race has been a nightmare what with the government of George Bush abandoning all pretense that they were conservative and resorting to rank socialism to deal with the financial crisis.This, coupled with a mainstream media so obviously in the tank for Obama along with a fierce rejection of conservatism by many of their friends and neighbors has literally upended the world the populists knew just a few short years ago.

And into this collapsing world come their supposed betters telling them they are wrong about Palin. The elites simply cannot fathom why the populists would latch on to Palin and invest so much of their loyalty and admiration.

Palin represents the future to these populists. She’s like the first born of a monarch - all the hopes for future happiness and success rests on her shoulders. If McCain goes down, the heartland has Palin to look forward to. This attitude has caused the populists to overlook or ignore some of Palin’s obvious shortcomings - something that the elites cannot do, being “realists” who can “step outside the conservative cocoon” and see things as they “really are.”

By damning Palin along with the liberals, the elites come off as “piling on” - something more akin to betrayal than a simple disagreement about politics. So the elites are insensitive while the populists are oblivious. And Palin?

My personal belief is that if the elites would give her six months or a year in Washington in a McCain administration, she would be more than ready to take over if worse came to worse. She has proven to be tough, smart, and possessing good political instincts. But the elites have a point when they say that she simply is not up to speed on national issues now nor will she be before inauguration. And using her as an attack dog is not the best use of her talents. She articulates a fine conservative vision in language that all Americans can understand and embrace. And when she looks into a camera, she is pure magic - a gift that any politician in America would kill for.

So is this really a set to about Palin? Or is there something a little deeper at work tearing at both elites and populists? At bottom, I think the elites blame the base for what could very well be an electoral disaster while the populists are all set to lay the blame for any election disappointments at the feet of the elites for what they see as a betrayal of conservatism itself in its hour of need.

And at this point, I see no way over the wall that is beginning to separate these two strains of conservatism that need each other if the movement is going to resurrect itself following what may be shaping up as a disaster of historic proportions.

 This blog post originally appeared in The American Thinker

Note: Please excuse the slow loading website. My hosting company is working on it. 

I see where a few of my friends on the right are calling for the McCain campaign to “unleash” Palin and just let her be herself. This is delusional bordering on willful self deception. With Palin, what you see is what you get. There is no hidden genius. There is no glib, down to earth Will Rogers-like cornpone philosopher just waiting to be freed from the McCain campaign’s efforts to prep her for the media.

The Sarah Palin we have seen in interviews - minus the deliberate cutting and pasting done by the CBS partisans - is the Palin we got: Unsure of herself, light on facts, and clearly (at the present) over her head on the national political stage.

The good news is that all of this can be overcome with a little experience. It’s no accident that Presidential candidate Barack Obama held press “avails” on average once every 8 days during the first 9 months of his campaign. Even after that he made himself available to the press only twice a week. (Every other candidate had daily avails - sometimes twice a day). One might recall the famous Obama avail held in early March where, for the first time, Chicago reporters covering the Rezko mess got to ask the messiah some questions. His response? “C’mon guys. I’ve answered like 8 questions already.”

Never again were the Trib and Sun Times reporters covering the Obama scandals allowed to ask any questions off the cuff. Only Obama “beat” reporters from those publications who were following the campaign were granted access to the candidate. (Obama sat down with editorial staffs of both papers a few weeks later - after massive preparation, of course - and managed to evade the tough questions about Rezko and his real estate dealings with the convicted felon.)

The stumbling, bumbling manner in which Obama answered those questions at the March avail revealed a candidate not ready for high office - which is the obvious reason Obama was protected and hidden by his campaign from the press during those first months.

Palin did not have the luxury of being protected from the press for months as Obama clearly was. No doubt a year from now - if she is elected - her performance in these kinds of interviews as well as press conferences will be adequate if not spectacular. She is not stupid nor does she lack quick wits. Her problem is unfamiliarity and a lack of depth when it comes to knowledge - ignorance if you will - of national issues and her performance reveals that fact painfully.

Of course, the left has jumped all over her with their tried and true personal attack, calling Palin ignorant” and “stupid.” If I had a dollar every time a liberal called a Republican candidate “stupid” I would be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Eisenhower (dumb, incoherent), Goldwater (crazy and stupid), Ford (dumb jock and a stumblebum), Reagan (dumb actor), Quayle (can’t spell potato), Jack Kemp (dumb jock), George Bush (dumb playboy). The harsh truth is, the personal attack works when you have the press and other media (think Saturday Night Live riffing off liberal talking points for Ford, Reagan, Quayle, Kemp, and Bush 43), buttressing and playing to that exact same argument. It is a potent combination and only the basic good sense of the American voter has saved the GOP from being shut out entirely over the last 50 years.

Lost in all of this (and the Obama campaign is breathing a sigh of relief for that) is the continuing adventures of the gaffe master himself Joe Biden. The large number of ignorant, incorrect, stupid, incredibly wrong statements by Biden over the last fortnight have been obscured by Palin’s problems. So expect the debate between the two - one ignorant of national issues the other unable to not say the first thing that comes into his head even if it is spectacularly wrong - to be a gaffe fest that will have both campaigns scrambling in the days following to correct the record or trying to undo the damage done by these two.

Biden’s gaffes reveal a shallow, unkempt mind - disorganized, arrogant, and stubbornly resistant to facts. If Palin is “stupid,” what does that make Biden? And, if liberals were honest with themselves (an admittedly forlorn hope), how much more “qualified” is Biden for the presidency than Palin given the extraordinary lack of depth of his character and intellect?

All this begs the question; is Palin qualified to be President if necessary? Right now, if she were forced to take over the top of the ticket I would have to say no. A year from now? I believe she will be as ready as anyone. A year at the center of power would give her all the experience and knowledge anyone would need to become president.

No one believes McCain chose her because she was qualified to become president “from day one.” Few are. She was a political choice as all Vice Presidential selections are. But this idea that there is a hidden Sarah Palin just waiting to be “unleashed” is kooky. She isn’t going to suddenly start speaking in complete sentences or stop repeating herself, or give anything save a thumbnail’s sketch of understanding when it comes to the issues. Perhaps she will be more relaxed during the debate and do a slightly better job of projecting herself. But that’s the best Palin supporters can hope for - for now.

Expectations for Palin are once again lower than dirt for the debate which means if she shows up, stays awake, gives us some charming one liners, and doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes, she wins hands down. I think Biden will not be able to help himself and will, when he is unaware the camera is on him, smile that condescending smile he is known for and set off the women of America on a tirade against him. He is far too arrogant and has too much belief in his own superiority not to treat Palin as he would some dumb hick from Wasilla. That’ll play great with most women in America, trust me Joe.

With Palin, it’s what you see is what you get. Imagining her as something she isn’t is only deluding yourself.