Clearly, McCain is a rotten corpse, and is slowly being wiped off the map. The electoral map. Sarah Palin is slowly disposing of him, going, as Dickerson says, rogue. What I thought was a simple conservative realignment is more complex than that, and weird questions linger about Caribou Barbie. Namely:
Is she intentionally or unintentionally off-message? My guess is the latter. When perplexed, she punts. How else do you square her position on rewarding the DPRK with her abstinence-only diplomacy? She doesn't have a guru, she's flying blind, there's no way she's capable of orchestrating something as diabolical as a stab-McCain-to-run-in-2012 reverse.
Why did she pummel McCain on gay marriage? She has the right on lockdown. (Okay, except for Roanoke, Virginia.) Shucks, somebody out there is so fired up by her candidacy that they're illegally killing bears and dressing them up in Obama gear. Dissing McCain for her own benefit is such a surreptitious kick to the balls.
Did someone tell Palin that McCain wanted to give her the ax, sending her into a flurry of preemptive strikes and gross, confusing incompetence, leading to her ultimate downfall? Is this like Throne of Blood?
What all this boils down to is the original and abiding question of Palin's candidacy: why her? I've had the feeling that she was simply the only person McCain called who said yes. I never bought the arguments for doing something mav'ricky, for rallying the base, for attempting to appeal to the Femmes d'Hillary. Thin gruel. There are plenty of intelligent, qualified Republican women (I will never call Olympia Snowe Lobster Barbie); McCain's been pandering to the right for two years at least; he knows as well as anyone that the change-meme is Obama's property. Rationalizations. Palin answered the phone. Since, you know, she doesn't read the Jewish media outlets, she was the only person in America who thought being Walnuts' VP was a smart career move.
And now the question resurfaces, only she asks it of herself: Why me? Why isn't Tim Pawlenty stuck on this Ferris wheel?
There is, however, a light at the end of the shitstorm for Sarah Palin. Ted Stevens is done. Whether he gets elected or not, or is elected and resigns mid-term, the days of his funnelling contracts to friends and countrymen are over. Someone is going to run for his seat before 2014. Now, were you Sarah Palin, wouldn't you rather be junior Senator from Alaska than be John McCain's vice-president?
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ds
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
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