Republican Reckoning: the Rise and Fall of Sarah Palin

Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 09:20:13 AM PST

"She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero"
-Former Palin cheerleader and Right wing hack, Rod Dreher

The Republican Convention was a magical land where desperate people could say whatever they wanted, where nobody actually believed them but everybody applauded and sheds tears like it was the bestest most truthiest tidbit they ever heard. Why? Because every single person in that hall shared collectively in the Great Desperation. Every single tenant of their ideology they’d held so close to their red, white and blue breasts had had all the opportunity to work out for themselves, in the last eight years more than ever. What more can you ask for than a Red-Meat Holy-Rolling Oil-Man Republican Executive and a Republican dominated Congress? Like never before the Party had all the opportunity in the world to show once and for all the supremacy of their beliefs and leadership, and what’s the status of their America come Election Time, 2008? In the toilet, in so many ways I won’t bother to list them. You’re either paying attention or you’re not.

Anyways, from thence came Palin.

From thence came Palin, and so the Desperate Folk rallied and gathered and slavered and slobbered, gobbling hideous lies by the fist-full and furiously chanting "DRILL, DRILL, DRILL!" until tears poured from their eyes. But their new champion had arrived in the not unpleasing form of a moose-killing, lipstick-wearing pitbull/hockey-mom/Reagen in a skirt/beauty contest winner. And she gave a speech. "Hot damn!" exclaimed many the conservative commentator that night and in the 24 hour media cycles to come, "did she give a barn-burner of a speech!" She gave a barn-burning, game-changing holy hell of a speech that brought back the all the joy and triumph of being a Republican again! Ooooh those Leftie loonies were gonna get it! Ever skinned a polar bear, Hillary? HAH!!!

And how they basked in her genius, the glory that was Wasilla mayor Sarah Palin on that night. How could they not? She was going to change the way Washington worked, while making no mention of the fact that it was those very people in that very room and their peers around the country that are in charge of working Washington, (and Wall Street, it turns out) precisely the way it was! It was like Sassy Sarah had somehow gave them all this huge gift of both assuaging their guilt for their recently toileted America and never hinting anyone oughta take responsibility for it and to certainly not change one bit about the way they do business and make money. As obvious a lie as you’ll ever get but not for these people and not in this magical land. It would be the highlight of her political career, a moment where she didn’t walk nor ran but soared above the heads of all who watched. It would never get that good again.

From thence came Palin. Gave her speech on a Friday and by Monday we’d heard whiff of not one, not two but three different emerging scandals from either her time as mayor of Wasilla or outrageous, demonstrable lies from her slowly moldering speech. "I did a buncha things I didn’t really do," became the real upshot of that speech and by the end of the day Monday all sorts of bets circulated the internet involving the likelihood of Palin having to step down. Certainly there was brief respite when McCain gained a post-convention bounce in the polls from that magnificent speech of hers but from then on things just got worse and worse for Sarah Palin (to say nothing of the McCain campaign). Turned out one hell of a speech was all she had in her.

McCain and his crew were quick enough to spot it. It was opening weekend and she was America’s new darling and didn’t we all tune into our favorite Sunday morning talk shows to get another glimpse of this plucky beauty, another dose of this foxy frontierswoman talking trash inre the Democrats and promising the change the whole Universe seemed to need at that moment? But where was she? No interviews? Reeeeeeally? Not the whole next week, even? Not taking questions from anybody? Ugly thoughts began to rumble through the guts of the Desperate People like bad coffee. And rightfully so.

It was well established that she hadn’t been vetted at all, what if she can’t handle an interview, even a question? What if McCain (who many of them had never liked anyway and was running his campaign like...well...a 72 year-old man) had done the unthinkable and chosen a scandal-ridden, unknown airhead as a running mate? If this were shown to be the case then the Desperate would become something they had arguably always been but never been forced to admit, something somehow even worse than desperate: Reckless. And Foolish.

She had three (but really two) interviews and each was a disaster in its own way. Turned out that when she wandered too far from the talking points she came off as something of an idiot, a hard-trying child that would just barf out unconnected words when answering questions she was supposed to know but didn’t. One Kossack described this phenomena as a ‘word-salad.’ ‘Utter disaster’ probably works just as well.

It got to the point that even the Democrats and the far Left started to feel bad watching the Republican vice-standard-bearer muddle her way in, out and around not just one but nearly any question she got. Sure, it was a hoot at first but there was no joy in Mudville by her third (but really second) outing in the News. There was little sport in it for even the most hardest of bloggers when she launched verbal diarreah all over fellow chowder-head Katie Couric, who I also felt sorry for, for the first time ever.

What a moment. Imagine it: you discover your interviewee is a complete and utter kumquat and it’s kind of your duty as a journalist to expose that to the world, given that she’s one nearly-octagenerian-hearbeat away from the Presidency of the United States of America and thus, the World (well, not anymore but that’s a whole other blog). And in that brief moment you’re enshrined in history alongside the biggest political faceplant ever. Couric, for her part, didn’t test her too heavily because she didn’t have to. You either know how to play the bagpipes or you don’t. For a politician, it was becoming more and more clear to all and sundry, Palin was one hell of a moosegutter.

You wanted her and would-be Emperor McCainus to go down in flames but somehow...not like that? You know? Republicans may get pleasure out of completely crushing the souls of their opponent, stripping them of all dignity and laughing great belly laughs for decades about it but Democrats, it will be shown, have little stomach for such things and would rather look to the future. Politically, it may be their biggest weakness or their greatest strength. History will be the judge of that also. But I digress.

From thence came Palin. She was a shooting star. Now she’s dust. A National joke. Republican roadkill. What will she be remembered for? Her folksy chatter, sass and physical beauty will perhaps be missed by some. She’ll be fodder for the Democrats and other stand-up comedians for years to come. Most Republicans will wince at the mere mention of her name, perhaps reflecting upon their own humiliating moments where they’d desperately defended this muddle-headed chipmunk as the new savior of the Republican party and perfectly able to step up and take the reigns should her ancient crocodile of a ‘running mate’ fall face-first into his presidential cheerios. To the smart ones she’ll be the Republican’s reckoning, that final, undeniable realization that everything they ever knew or thought they knew were necessarily not so. And that they too had to change.