She will be a refreshing and intelligent change from the deadwood there now.
On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 6:16 AM, Liberal mike 532 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is Sarah Palin Being Christened as De Facto Leader of the GOP? > http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/109942/ > Sarah Palin is a walking, talking psychobomb -- and she's on the > verge > of becoming the face of the Republican party. A > standup comic once joked about his inner monologue while > rubbernecking > through the scene of a car accident. First the serious reaction: "Oh! > How horrifying! How awful!" Then the morbidly gleeful: "Cool! Is that > an arm?" > > Watching the Republican Party implosion and subsequent bloody > flailing > has become my favorite spectator sport. "Wow, the Republican Party is > really, really horribly mangled," then, "Cool! Palin's making an ass > of herself on TV again!" > > > Why the excitement? Well, it appears as if she's being christened as > the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Wednesday, for example, > instead of attributing his victory to the well-known Republican > majority in Georgia, Saxby Chambliss credited his expected victory to > Sarah Palin's stump speeches: > > > "...when she walks in a room, folks just explode." > Explode? Smart choice of words, Senator. Sarah Palin makes > Republicans > explode. Perfect. > > > If Palin, in fact, becomes the leader of the Republican Party, > exploding is precisely what will happen -- and not in the weirdly > excited-slash-sexual way Chambliss seemed to imply. Specifically, > Sarah Palin is a walking, talking psychobomb, and elevating her to > anything beyond a near-term novelty will be disastrous -- in a word, > "explosive" -- for the Republican Party. > > > And it'll be almost too much fun to watch. > > > As of right now, we have several contenders for this post. There's > "Sister Sarah" (a nickname I don't quite understand). There's the > twice divorced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. There's Bobby > Jindal, the far-right governor of Louisiana. And Tuesday, we learned > that Jeb Bush might be running for Senate and thus throwing his > gigantic hat into the fight for the future of the party. > > > How screwed are the Republicans right now? Put it this way: the > sanest > contender in the above list is named "Bush." Yes, Bush: a name that > proved to be even less popular this year than the name "Hussein." Yet > there he is front and center. > > > Now, it's important to clarify the schadenfreude and why the > aforementioned Republican contenders are so much fun, and, more > importantly, why many fellow liberals are rooting for them to keep > talking. > > > Simply put, Palin and the others, will serve to more or less confine > the Republican Party to the deep South where there are enough white > fundamentalist hoopleheads to provide the GOP with a respectable > electoral showing, but not enough support to seriously compete > nationally. In other words, the Republicans are inexplicably pushing > names that will do much more harm than good. And that's just fine and > dandy. > > > For instance, apart from her unserious pageant walking and clueless > turkey geeking, it's practically impossible for Sarah Palin, with her > far-right ideology and divisive politics, to expand a Republican > electorate that's already suffering from, well, shrinkage. Her appeal > is so laser-focused on a rabidly fanboy-ish chunk of the GOP base > that > many more Americans who would otherwise vote Republican will surely > continue to snap to other options. Meanwhile, the Palin base -- the > fanboys who are "exploding" over Sarah Palin -- are a mélange of Bush > dead-enders, disgruntled former Bush loyalists who haven't yet > realized that the only difference between Palin and Bush is, well, > lipstick, and, of course, way too many disturbingly pervy older men. > Outside of this narrow demographic, everyone else thinks she's more > or > less an earnest yet embarrassing joke. > > > Anecdotally speaking, while working the polls on Election Day, I > overheard more than one relatively uninformed, uneducated Republican > -- I mean, guys who probably think "peeance freeance" is an actual > foreign policy term -- turn to their buddy and say (paraphrasing), > "Palin's kind of an idiot. And she probably don't know what peeance > freeance means neither." > > > The only possibilities for the resuscitation of the Republican Party > are either, 1) a failed Obama presidency or, 2) an as-of-yet > unannounced transformative and inspirational Republican figure. > > > There's nothing to really indicate the former, but there's always the > freak possibility that a random cascade of uncontrollable events > could > swing the White House into turmoil. It happened to President Carter. > > > As for the latter, I really can't think of a Republican answer to > Barack Obama. Once again, however, the Republicans are betting on > either Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal to be the knock-off Bizarro Obama. > Palin aside, the notion that Jindal is the "Republican Obama" > amplifies how truly ridiculous and desperate the Republicans are. > > > They're making a huge mistake in assuming that just because Jindal is > young and of unusual ethnic origins that he's the equivalent of > Barack > Obama -- in the same way they mistakenly calculated that Sarah Palin > would attract female voters just because she's a woman, even though > she possessed none of the positive qualities of Senator Clinton. It's > totally shallow and vaguely racist. A party which has so often dealt > in identity politics and racial divisiveness to suddenly go, "Hey, > look over here! We have an ethnic, too!" seems weird and awful to me. > > > Additionally, Jindal's religious extremism won't manufacture any new > Republican voters from the middle -- he's anti-choice without > exceptions, he supports teaching creationism as a science in public > schools and, yes, he once performed an exorcism on a friend who he > believed was possessed by a demon. Yeah, if there's one thing the > Republican Party needs more of, it's religious zealotry. > > > So we have an exorcist, a Bush, a turkey geeker who makes people > explode, and Newt, who, by the way, wrote a book imagining if the > South had won the Civil War. If these cable reality show misfits > represent the future of the Republican Party, it's going to be a > seriously entertaining four years. > > > BobCesca.com > > > > > > -- *~@):~{> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. 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