It had to happen eventually, whether in a Presidential campaign or otherwise. The Palin phenomenon, which, for the kind of pop reality television stench of it, has long outlasted its shelf life, is now starting to reek.
Palin should have known to shut up during this whole thing. On whole year from Iowa, she should have simply wished her prayers to the victims. But, typical for Palin, she couldn’t get past her own victimization.
Perhaps worse for a presidential hopeful, she showed that she has surrounded herself with idiots even dumber than her. Her spokesperson, on Sunday, made the fatuous claim that the bullseye map was “surveyor marks” thus moving the story from a lefty thing to a mainstream thing, making it last another day or so, and grooving perfectly with the negative impression that she’s full of shit.
And then there was today’s Facebook video and its tone deaf use of the term “blood libel.” Weenie liberals whose life revolves around criticizing liberal criticism were quick to argue that she probably didn’t know what it meant, and, therefore, it wasn’t an insensitive reference to a painful element of the Jewish past. Some Jews even gave her a pass on this, since, you know, she’s “Pro-Israel” (i.e. Pro-Likud). Even the liberal bashing, double standard ADL (after expending two paragraphs attacking liberals) nicely asked Palin to rephrase.
On the day of the memorial.
I could go on talking about how she use a TelePromptR after thinking it was so funny that the black man did. But, really, the point is that she didn’t try and transcend her corner of the political world (the shooting animals from small plane apocalyptic evangelical crowd) at all. She just bunkered within it.
So, here’s the manual for every single other Republican in the primary: attack Sarah. It’s very easy to throw her to distraction and she’ll make a mistake responding, also, in what manner Charlie? Sure, this will only further endear her to her base, but that base has to be getting smaller the more she makes herself into an angry clown, and, alas, the more time passes, since, again she is not a person of long term ideas, but a pop phenomenon like swing music.
I was never going to dismiss Palin because she was too conservative. Those are famous last words. But unless she fires her staff and does some apologizing (and even then) it’s not just that she’s too divisive, it’s that she’s too incompetent, her people are too incompetent and tone deaf, and she is too volatile to win elections.
UPDATE:
…but they might as well nominate her after that speech by Obama. The black man, as I predicted, is already back at 53% in one poll and is moving up in all of them (and we haven’t even gotten to the SOTU yet).
Do you think–is it possible–that Obama decided to do nothing but legislate during the last Congress with the big majorities and told everyone that… and now he’s “back”? I hope so.
Polemic® 