Sarah Palin's News Roundup

Believe it or not, I've been arguing for days with various smart folk that the Republican VP choice on McCain's behalf was brilliant. A gamble, sure, but a bold one which shows a real grasp of the country. First off, it was far better than McCain's top picks, ending his ongoing, agonized personal debate between the Toady Party's Joe Lieberman and the Desperate Housewives show's Nicolette Sheridan. Having only met Sarah Palin once, big-on-blondes McCain didn't remember her name and after repeated promptings, got impatient and said, "Whatever! Hey, I'm just the candidate--if Karl Rove says I'll run with a flock of flamingos, what choice do I have?"

Really, though, Rove & Co. outdid themselves on this one. Ha-ha-ha, change? You want change?? Palin is a Fundie who sports an impressive resume for the 80% of America which reads nothing except free People, Us, and tabloid periodicals you find at beauty parlors, dentist offices, church foyers and oil change franchises. She is perfect for the 95% of America that thinks 'Foreign Affairs' refers to the upcoming Boris and Natasha movie starring the "Beef, It's What's for Dinner" spokesman Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson (who recently broke up with Lance Armstrong!).

Palin, a former Alaska runner-up for the Miss America Pageant who married her high-school sweetheart, has also been a sports anchor, a small-town mayor, has 5 children, is a no-rapes-barred pro-lifer, and before being governor of the Toughest State in the Union for the past two years, was Alaska's Oil and Gas Commissioner. She catches salmon, is a former secessionist, wants creationism taught in schools, shoots caribou, hunted bear as a child, she commands the Alaskan National Guard, and was once on a jet that re-fueled in Ireland. People keep telling me how these are bad things, and I reply, "Don't you get it?! This is nothing less than a breakthrough in American Politics. It's like we're primates picking at grubs and the monolith from the movie 2001 appears above us and says, 'Finally--the Trailer Park President has arrived!!'"

Seriously, check your rationality at the door, it doesn't belong inside the US ballot box. Rove & Co has their psychographic act down and the lurps are on the case. Exhibit #227 in How Not to Think About America: Steny Hoyer, US House Majority Wet Noodle, last Friday called Palin "a worse choice for VP than Dan Quayle." Precisely, Steny my shell-shocked glossolalia victim, precisely. Quayle, back in those distant, beatific days of Acadia, was famous only for his ingratiating dumbness and cheerful blondeness, and if I remember correctly, he became George Bush Senior's Vice President after they won the god-damned election together, Steny you good-for-nothing Congress-bastard! (Calm, soothing thoughts, breezes, pretty butterflies landing on flowers.) So...what kind of sick elitist allows themselves to go around being called "Steny," anyway?

Now the Republicans have an improved, supercharged version of Dan Quayle. In fact, to the evangelicals, Palin makes Dan Quayle look like Dustin Hoffman when he played 'Rainman.' As America's first VPILF, she did not disappoint, delivering her acceptance speech, "I Will Break America's Glass Ceiling With These Award-Winning Breasts" to thunderous applause while McCain (I am not kidding) approved of her nether regions. She has dominated the media play ever since, even fueling wild speculations she covered for her daughter Bristol by claiming her illegitimate Down's Syndrome baby as her own. Jesus, you just can't make this stuff up.

Yeah, she has a few scandals going and is insane in that special way that's so common among people who long for Armageddon. But she gave a speech in Texas (back in April, when she was already being considered as the VP pick) apparently with amniotic fluid leaking down her leg, then she hopped a 10-hour flight to Alaska so her commercial fisherman husband could drive her to their little home-town hospital and she could have a baby. That might have been incredibly dumb, but far more importantly it was tough. The Fundies aren't disturbed by a pregnant teenager here, a fired ex-brother-in-law there. C'mon. They identify with that shit, and they will reach for their unmaxed credit cards to give money to the McCain campaign when their preachers tell them to.

Let's face it: Sarah Palin is someone right wing evangelicals, the biggest political force in American history, can get behind. And that's not even getting into her possible resonance with women. It'll be very interesting to see how the scandals play out, but the ones on the table right now probably don't shake core appeal. (And since when have scandals prevented most Republicans from getting elected?) Presidential politics are emotional politics, and whichever way you slice it, naming a Fundie as VP reinvigorates The Base--something a McCain, a Romney, a Lieberman, a Pawlenty could never do. I predict that the next McCain announcement will be that they've raised more donations than in any month before.

(Update Shocker: The atheists who run Us magazine came out with a hard-hitting cover that's on the stands now, themed 'Babies, Lies, & Scandal.' The word you're looking for Mitt Romney, is schadenfreude. Watch for it on your next supermarket trip, with bonus reportage on other shocking teen pregnancies.)

(Update Shocker 2: The NYT is reporting his team couldn't move Oldfinger off his Lieberman Fixation until just 2 weeks ago. Infighting would explain the story's theme of incomplete vetting, making it more likely Palin hoodwinked 'em on something big. Here's hopin'!)