Conservative males are such babies. But the more I read about "the end" of Sarah Palin after this election, the more I'm reminded by the histrionic death knells of Apple Computer touted weekly in the business press, throughout the entire decade of the 1990s.We see where those analyses got them.
The only thing they seem do over at The American Standard, Newsbusters, National Review and Weekly Standard is weep and wail about some issue or another, usually having to do with Sarah Palin's quite mixed reception on the national scene.
But I end up agreeing somewhat with people like The American Standards' Robert Stacy McCain (a rightwing crank if anyone's seen one; never thought I'd agree with him on anything, ever), that the SaPa is not going away and that "liberal spin" (i.e. anything that doesn't fit to their repressive, conformist way of life) on Sarah Palin is wrong.
I wouldn't say they're "wrong", it's more like they are engaging in wishful thinking.
Asking, rhetorically, "Why America Turned on Sarah Palin" on Huffington Post SP page, Peter Beinart comments in the Washington Post (subscription),
The economic challenges of the coming era are complicated, fascinating and terrifying, while the cultural battles of the 1960s feel increasingly stale. If John McCain loses tomorrow, the GOP will probably choose someone like Mitt Romney or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to lead it back from the wilderness, someone who -- although socially conservative -- speaks fluently about the nation's economic plight and doesn't try to substitute identity for policy. Although she seems like a fresh face, Sarah Palin actually represents the end of an era. She may be the last culture warrior on a national ticket for a very long time.
Oh, I doubt that. We would be in grave error to write off either the culture warriors that pack venues to touch the hem of her garments, or the embodiment of American fascism poured into those well-tailored suits.
Marshall, for his part, "guesses" he
could imagine a rump Republican party nominating Palin. It could be Palin with perhaps Mark Levin as veep to nail down the all important angry, middle-aged DC Jewish male, right-wing ravanchist vote and Joe the Plumber to run her Phalangist paramilitary. But my strong hunch is that if McCain loses tomorrow that will be the end of Sarah Palin's national political career even if there are some persistent twitches and jerks over the coming months.
Let's put it this way (again), if reports of her whacko Bishop, or her out of control children, or her $1.5 million in assets, or $150000 shopping sprees or questions about various ethics violations still doesn't resonate with the underinformed voter as hypocritical and living high on the hog on government dime, nothing will.
They still think, aww, she's just like me, or just like I'd like to be, or just like I'd like to F, knowing full well they couldn't pour piss out of a boot, much less make a competent world leader.
And the left is not immune, either: it's as if the left hasn't learned ANYTHING about the very history of "the culture war" that Beinert points up. In 2004, the left suddenly discovered the "neocons" and the "religious right", though both movements had been developing side by side for decades.
It was a mistake to write off the televangelists, the Robertsons, the Hagees, the Falwells, and other Christian whackos, but that's what the left did, instead of providing a safe haven for people to emerge from that lifestyle into something more rational and humane, building on the liberal traditions and institutions that came before us: abolition, Civil Rights, suffrage, antiwar, free speech, marriage equality, and disability parity. Let's learn from history, this time.
Wishful thinking that Sarah Palin is going to slink back to Alaska, get impeached or end up in jail as some of the thinking might go, is not going to get us anywhere, even in the case of an Obama win, because we are still going to have to deal with the Palinites come day one. And in the case of an Obama loss, we are going to have to regroup immediately on November 5 to pressure our reps into a voting bloc that will defeat everything Palin/McCain try to push through, because none of it will be good.
That is, if anyone still believes in the processes of American democracy in the case of one of the worst tickets in General Election history makes it to the top.
Marshall adds:
Palin (and perhaps Joe the Plumber too) appeal to the brainstem of conservatism, where the most primitive and persistent impulses are registered, even as the areas of higher reasoning and cognition (frontal lobes and all that) are flat-lining or tracking into oblivion.
True be that, I make this the central plank of this post: BECAUSE they appeal to the crudest, most base aspects of American politics, that is what makes their simpleton politics so effective.
Sarah Palin could go to one of her klan rallies and say "And sohh, ya knohhh, jack sprat could eat no fat" and get a 2 minute ovation. These throngs are what we rational people are up against tomorrow, and the day after and the year after and the decade after...one gets the drift.
Excuse the soapbox, but this is no time for ostrich or pie-in-the-sky politics, because she is not kidding around, and neither are her pitchfork followers. We've come too far from where we started from, to roll over in the face of a fascist takeover of this country.
We have a lot of work to do.
