Recently in Republicans Category

Ross Douthat identifies precisely why Palin is not an answer to the problem facing the GOP ... but also why she is completely mainstream within the party too (that is to say, nothing remotely radical, except superficially):

From Glenn Beck to the Tea Parties, much of the energy in the post-Bush G.O.P. is with people who have grasped, albeit sometimes in inchoate ways, that big government and big business are increasingly on one team, and the champions of free markets and limited government are on the other. But they don't know what to do about it, and what they do seem to know -- cutting taxes, and letting the rest take care of itself -- is often non-responsive, not only to the problems the country faces, but to the problems they themselves have diagnosed.

I've written about how this thing Ross identifies is, for me, the most substantive lesson, if that's the word, to be gleaned from Palin's book. I don't think she's being cynical at all; I think she genuinely doesn't grasp the contradiction at the heart of the way she explains the world to herself. I think the sense many of the people Palin identifies as "ordinary, hardworking" patriots have of being screwed over by the powerful is real, and based largely in fact. What is a mystery is how they are incapable of seeing that the post-Reagan economic model they've sworn loyalty to -- the idea that there's nothing wrong with us that more tax-cutting and "getting government out of the way" can't fix -- is incapable of addressing the situation we're in today. In this way, Palin is not only useless, but she's actually harmful, because she obscures the real issues. In this, I hasten to say, she's no different from any other leading Republican politician, but it's a pity that she and Mike Huckabee, the two top GOPers whose background ought to have prepared them to come up with a critique that accounts for this problem, and in turn have devised a possible solution, seem prisoner to 30-year-old Republican cliches.

I've often thought that the problem with Jesse Jackson -- and, in a way, his tragedy -- is that for him, it's always 1965 in Selma. That is, what was once a strong and true response to the world as it is becomes, over time, calcified dogma irrelevant to the world as it has become. For many Republicans, it's always 1980 in Carter's America.

Andrew Sullivan is shutting down his blog to read "Going Rogue." Excerpt:

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it - and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided - is a bewildering task.

[snip]

There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.

We have only one commitment: to get this right. Please bear with us as we do the best we can.

Oh my. This is either a prime candidate for a Dish Poseur Alert, or Sarah Palin's eeeevil vajayjay finally swallowed Sully whole.

Got it this morning, and will be reviewing it on NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon. The story so far: Sarah loves Alaska, she loves America, she loves serving "ordinary, hardworking people," she loves tax-cutting, and she loves our free enterprise system. She hates hates hates people who tell her she can't do this or that because she's a woman. A hundred pages in, two things jump out:

1. She's selling a personality, not a platform. This might change as I get further into the narrative, but there's very little of substance here, and a whole lot of attitude. That may be politically smart, given how Americans tend to vote on personality.

2. She's a conflicted populist, and doesn't understand that. It's simply bizarre how she can write with passion about how badly Exxon screwed over the people of Alaska in the Exxon Valdez incident, and how the cozy relationship between Alaska's government and the oil industry worked against the interests of ordinary hardworking people ... and yet repeat shopworn GOP nostrums like this one:

Somebody is not connecting the dots. OK, back to the book. I'll update this later.

UPDATE: Page 239:

Writing my convention speech was really a team effort, and the captain of the team was an ace speechwriter named Matthew Scully. Scully had worked for Bush 43, Dick Cheney, and John McCain. He is, to use author Rod Dreher's term, a 'crunchy con.' A political conservative, he is a bunny-hugging vegan and gentle, green soul who I think would throw himself in the path of a semi truck to save a squirrel.

Heh.

UPDATE.2: OK, here's the text of my NPR review, which is now airing on All Things Considered. The gist? "Going Rogue" does nothing to relaunch Palin or establish that she's capable of running the country. There's lots of tedious detail about Alaska politics, and loads of chatty stuff about Palin family life. And there's plenty of bitchy stuff about the McCain campaign and the media and various cultural elites. All of it is liberally laced with the usual right-wing buzzwords and boilerplate. But there's nothing to her. She spends seven pages dishing about her appearance on Saturday Night Live, but only just over one page discussing her national security strategy (which amounts to: America must be strong and win the war on terror). Know what her economic strategy is? Cut taxes and get government out of the way. Really, it's no more detailed than that. You don't expect to read Friedman here, but come on, is that the best she can do?

It is fascinating, though, to read how she discovered through her work how big business gets cozy with big government, to the detriment of the common good. But she cannot let that knowledge get in the way of reciting her 1980s GOP catechism about the market. Weirdly, she goes on and on about how capitalism must be allowed to work, and let the creative-destruction chips fall where they may ... and yet later will talk about how wrong it is that Alaska's natural gas industry remains undeveloped because it's been cheaper for Big Oil to explore and develop natural gas sources in places where the labor and infrastructure is cheaper. Sarah, I hate to break it to you, but you can't complain about government meddling in the economy as a Bad Thing, but then turn around and complain about Big Business doing what Big Business does, which is to maximize profits by cutting labor costs.

If this incoherent pot of message is populism, nuts to it!

UPDATE.3: Thinking back to the book I read today, it's noteworthy how completely unreflective Palin is regarding her own shortcomings. Anything she did wrong was somebody else's fault (e.g., Katie Couric's "biased" questions, the McCain campaign overpreparing her, etc.), or if it was her fault, it was because people she foolishly trusted let her down. To be sure, I think Palin is probably a likable person, and she really has suffered some nasty, disgusting attacks from Trig Truthers and others. But she is so far from being capable of being president of the United States it's not even funny. I know, I know, this isn't news, but you'd think that if there was anything more to her in terms of intellectual seriousness and judgment than we saw last fall, she'd have brought it out in a memoir she had most of a year to write with the help of a professional writer. But there's no there there. I'm not saying she's a bad person -- I don't believe she's a bad person at all -- but I am saying she's not a credible national political leader.

Writing in TAC, Sean Scallon describes the difference between Republican Party regulars and what he smartly describes as "Conservative, Inc.". -- i.e., the conservative interest groups, talk radio and media. He says both sides are full of Potemkin villagers:

As many writers have stated at TAC or various other websites and publications have written and stated for the past decade, Conservative INC. has run out of fresh ideas. It has ceased being "conservative" because has become what it should be opposing and that is an ideology instead of a state of mind. When its politicians are now trying to re-package issues like term limits and school vouchers as fresh, new ideas to campaign on; When they prattle on about cutting taxes without offering serious critiques or plans to reducing government; When they mindlessly support the war out of nationalist fervor that most people now oppose, even those within the institutional establishment (Brooks, Frum, Parker, et.al) have said their time is up. The bottom line is Hoffman still lost and Virginia and New Jersey elected governors aligned to the institutional wing of the party. And even among their own candidates there are heresies they wish not to talk about or hide. Hoffman and Rubio are big unlimited immigration supporters. Perry wanted to tear-up all of central Texas to build a massive highway to Kansas City (Remember the NAFTA Superhighway Slick Rick?) and charge a toll. Rubio is Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, hardly a political outsider. And besides, if a 9-11 Truther is a conspiracy theorist in 2008, then why is a Birther any different in 2009? Is it because of who is in the White House?

But the institutional establishment has no answers either because they refuse to admit the war that they binded both sides into supporting, led by their own set of ideologues, has failed and their answers for the economy or other pressing issues like health care are either incoherent or solutions that could easily be adopted by the Obama Administration or by Right-wing Democrats. It was they who were the noisy defenders of the Wall St. bailout. These are not exactly positions that a rally a great deal of popular support. If all the activist energy seems to be with Conservative INC. it is largely by default. Indeed, it shows how weak the establishment right now is when its own politicians were willing to support a non-major party candidate in order to enhance their "street cred" with the base and Conservative INC. The upcoming primaries have also made such pragmatists like Crist and Kirk look foolish with their "Romneyesque" positioning to make themselves more rightist in the eyes of the base.

Where do we who are conservatives, but have no interest in either the GOP establishment or Conservative Inc. supposed to go? To the Front Porch, I reckon. But after we get tired of sitting and drinking and complaining, what do we do?

This is interesting, and kind of touching. Excerpt:

If you have been reading us for any length of time, you know that we used to make fun of "Dubya" nearly every day...parroting the same comedic bits we heard in our Democrat circles, where Bush is still, to this day, lampooned as a chimp, a bumbling idiot, and a poor, clumsy public speaker.

But they've had a change of heart:

[W]e will always be grateful for what George and Laura Bush did this week, with no media attention, when they very quietly went to Ft. Hood and met personally with the families of the victims of this terrorist attack.

FOR HOURS.

The Bushes went and met privately with these families for HOURS, hugging them, holding them, comforting them.

If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks...you tell them that a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes...and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.

You may be as surprised by this as we are ourselves, but from this day forward George W. and Laura Bush are now on the same list for us as the Clintons, Geraldine Ferraro, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and the other political figures we keep in our hearts and never allow anyone to badmouth.

Criticize their policies academically and intelligently and discuss the Bush presidency in historical and political terms...but you mess with the Bushes personally and, from this day forward, you'll answer to us.

Read the whole thing. I hadn't realized the Bushes did that. God bless them, that was kind and loving.