I've been attempting, without much success, to avoid anything having to do with the roll-out of Sarah Palin 2.0. Like the New Nixon, the New Palin is the same as the old Palin, sans official title or base of public support apart from some on the right.
Last year during the Presidential election, I made it a point not to discuss the various tawdry and tabloid exploits of her family; to avoid nicknames such as Caribou Barbie; to steer clear, in essence, from anything other than her public positions on issues of national import.
This made for short posts.
Like Sam "Joe the Plumber" Wurzlbacher, Palin is another mindless doofus foisted on America by the McCain campaign in its futile effort to connect with the American people. That the Republican Party might just tear itself to shreds over the former governor of Alaska and her aspirations for what would likely be a temporary stint in higher office is actually quite funny. She is revealing herself as a shallow, largely ignorant pageant contestant bewildered by the fact that all her alleged charm and obvious good looks haven't wowed her critics. She seems even more befuddled that some of the judges turn thumbs down precisely on those characteristics that, in all likelihood, helped her out in the past.
The nice thing that all this media attention is doing is reminding us that, like the New Nixon, there really isn't a New Palin. There's just Sarah, with her bundle of catch phrases and prejudices, her refusal to admit that her entrance in to our national life is a stain that needs to be cleansed, rather than a moment to be celebrated. All that she represents, all she embodies, are the end result of all the contradictions within the conservative movement, visible at its dawning, pointed out at its zenith in the early 1980's, that have now rent it limb from limb.
While I understand why David Brooks and other thoughtful conservatives might be horrified at the thought that she might well be the Republican candidate in 2012, the sad truth is she is really all they have. That there is no "there" there is plain for all to see. Her rejection by the vast majority of the American people will only be a badge of honor for her supporters, who revel in their marginalization as a sign they are the tattered remnants of the faithful, the last vestiges of "real America" overwhelmed by a tsunami of political liberalism and cultural laxity.
She is, in many ways, the William Jennings Bryan of the Republicans in decline, without Bryan's many meritorious qualities. She even has this in common with Bryan - she left office before her term was up. As Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, Bryan quit because he detected, correctly, that Wilson was moving toward a more confrontational stance with Germany that could only lead to war. Palin left office in Juneau because . . . well, to my mind, because having someone ghost-write a book about her, making a lot of money, and getting her face on TV probably seemed more attractive than all that governing stuff.
