Osborne Ink || News that's fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.

Make no mistake, this is what the beginning of the race for the 2012 GOP nomination looks like:

The Sarah L Palin book tour express has crossed the borders of surrealism. She went on Rush Limbaugh’s show the other day and used 35 variations on the phrase “commonsense solutions” without suggesting a single real solution.

Limbaugh called Going Rogue “one of the most substantive policy books” he’s ever read.

Then Palin went on Hannity and confused Iran and Iraq more than once:

The default GOP candidate for 2012 also appeared on Christian Broadcasting Network, where she called her detractors “onely people, some shallow people who want to take a shot like that and we need to pray for (them).”

Sarah Palin told Oprah that she was annoyed by Katie Couric’s question, “what books or magazines do you read?” because it is offensive to Alaskan-Americans.

Seriously:

“No, it was more like, ‘Are you kidding me? Are you really asking me? To me, it was in the context of, ‘Do you read? How do you stay informed, you’re way up there?’” said Palin. “It seemed like she was discovering this nomadic tribe, a member of a tribe from some Neanderthal cave in Alaska, asking me, how do you stay in touch with the real world? That’s how I took the question.”

Spin: so easy, a cavewoman can do it. The least-recognized reversal of our time is how the right resorts to political correctness every time you challenge their Stupid™. We’re supposed to believe that the White House is full of socialists because one of them actually read Mao, but we’re not supposed to ask whether Miss Congeniality reads The Anchorage Daily News because it’s an insult to Alaskans, or something.

This is a version of events that could only come from a mind afflicted with Palin-Bachmann Syndrome™. Palin is clearly suffering from a mental illness that her base demographic refuses to see. Yet this woman could very well be the default GOP nominee for 2012:

If Palin launches a 2012 race – and survives the South Carolina primary with her aura intact – she could theoretically sweep the winner-take-all states without ever winning a majority anywhere. The Republican establishment (the congressional leadership, the governors, the major donors and national consultants) could all agree that Palin would be an electoral disaster against Obama in November and still be powerless to halt her juggernaut.

The Couric interview was a defining moment in the 2008 campaign. Oprah gave Sarah Palin a platform to repair her image, but I don’t think Sarah’s going to win back much public approval. Which means 2012 has the potential to turn into the greatest Republican train wreck in history.

I came across this op-ed by Charles Krauthammer on some right wing site:

Let’s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.(Emphasis mine)

Quackhammer then proceeds to repeat the very meme he was to debunk, i.e. that ObamaCare will eat your grandmother. Schizophrenic much?

No, say the defenders. It’s just that we want the doctors to talk to you about putting in place a living will and other such instruments. Really? Then consider the actual efficacy of a living will. When you are old, infirm and lying in the ICU with pseudomonas pneumonia and deciding whether to (a) go through the long antibiotic treatment or (b) allow what used to be called “the old man’s friend” to take you away, the doctor will ask you at that time what you want for yourself — no matter what piece of paper you signed five years earlier.

You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end — when facing death — not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer’s office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment.

Well, as pain and diminishment enter your life as you age, your calculations change and your tolerance for suffering increases. In the ICU, you might have a new way of looking at things.

Aha. Health care reform will make you not want to spend another six months hooked to a machine, unable to leave your bed, while life goes on and your kids’ inheritance gets drained and you watch your family’s whispered arguments over who has to stay with you. Sounds great — where do I sign up for this wonderful program?

Death, like taxes, is inevitable; this reality is slowly filtering into the minds of Medicare patients, so in the wake of his schizoid opening Quackhammer attempts another mixed message. After arguing that living wills are bad, he admits he has nothing against them.

He even proceeds to offer a precis of his own living will — “more a literary document,” he claims — complete with baseball metaphors. Because legal documents are well-known for their literary value to baseball fans.

There’s no scenario in Quackhammer’s mind where patients are no longer able to announce these decisions for themselves. Furthermore, what he’s denouncing is an amendment that would merely pay your doctor to have a conversation with you. His Wacky™ would only guarantee the poor don’t have as much preparation as the “literary.”

But back to Teh Crazy™. Quackhammer drew fire from conservatives; he was panned by Hot Air and Little Green Footballs. But in the minds of the most rabid Palin supporters, he committed the ultimate sacrilege: implying that Miss Alaska is not smart. Several blogs denounced him, and the comments were vicious.

But reading the blogs, I realized something: even on the right, belief in “death panels” is starting to peak as more and more media sources debunk the rumor. In fact, it is just about the only rumor being consistently debunked.

Krauthammer is making an ill-advised attempt to eject Teh Crazy™ and shock new life into a dead talking point — he’s a witch doctor blowing powder and shouting buggidyboo to raise up some Zombie Outrage™. Someone should tell him that Sarah has a serious problem with witch doctors.

H/t for the picture to Bob Cesca.

I was getting ready to go cut my mom’s lawn when I caught CNN reporting that Sarah Palin is not only declining to run for reelection in 2010, she’s resigning in about a month. The story says Palin is “pleased with the reception she’s gotten in the lower 48 states” — a clear signal that she’s leaving office to pursue national ambitions.

While I had expected Teh Train Wreck™ to get started sooner rather than later, I had no idea it would jump off the rails this fast. A few weeks ago my friend and Alaska blogger Wolfe Tone predicted she would decline to run again because her poll numbers have been dropping like a stone. But to resign now says volumes about both her ambitions and her disconnection from reality.

Yes, she has a fanatical base of support among right-wingers. But her negative poll numbers are monumental and she cannot open her mouth without something stupid falling out:

I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

Governing was never very important to Sarah; she has always pursued public office for its own sake. She is a creature of the tinfoil hat set whose career was born in the fringe of the conservative movement.

There is absolutely nothing mainstream about Sarah Palin. She is an extremist whose goal has always been the accumulation of power. Her world-view is stewed in a toxic mix of violent fringe Christianity and quack politics. A president Palin would bring us closer to Gideon than we’ve ever been. There is nothing harmless about this train wreck.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that Michael Jackson is dead and Todd Purdum has written an article for Vanity Fair about Sarah Palin.

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

Yesterday, I took a comprehensive tour of the wingnutosphere to gauge their reactions. Nothing I found was unpredictable, but a nontroversy flared up in their coverage that does tell us something about the select demographic to whom Palin appeals most. The limits of her charisma are the limits of her base, and that base is prone to project controversy where it does not exist while ignoring or filtering negative information. Furthermore, her base — like Sarah herself — conflates individual critics into monolithic enemies.

But first, the usual suspects: bloggers questioned the timing of the article, seeing as we are still three years from 2012 and the presidential election is so last year. There are some ad hominem attacks on the author, of course, and the usual accusations of elitism. Critics draw false equivalencies, accusing Purdum of double standards and unfair treatment. Tellingly, many wingnut warriors call the article sexist, then post a sexy picture of Palin in her running gear.

Deflection and projection rule the wingnut mind. The most vehement refrain about Purdum’s “hit piece” is that he attacks Palin’s family. Several bloggers give particular attention to a tangential figure: The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, who the Pundette accuses of “disturbing weirdness.” That is actually one of the milder phrases used on Sullivan, who stands accused of spreading conspiracy theories about Trig Palin, enabled by the Vanity Fair article.

For those unfamiliar with the Trig Palin “conspiracy,” it holds that Sarah’s daughter Bristol was actually Trig’s mother. The “proof” consists of little more than speculative innuendo based on circumstantial events. The offending paragraph in Purdum’s article, however, says nothing about those rumors:

But there were ominous signs—indications of an erratic nature. This is the third thing McCain could have discovered about Palin—a woman, after all, who kept a pregnancy secret for seven months, flew all the way home from Texas to Alaska with a near-full-term baby while leaking amniotic fluid, and then finally drove the 45 minutes from Anchorage to a hospital in Wasilla, all so that the child could be born in the 49th state. (Emphasis mine)

Oddly, most of these bloggers posted the complete paragraph and read their own insinuations into it. Moreover, Sullivan’s offending blog post doesn’t repeat the rumors either:

Palin could have gone to a major hospital in Anchorage and delivered the child and still have Trig as an Alaskan. But, no, she had to add an extra risk to her unborn child by ensuring her local hospital and family doctor could deliver the child – even if that extra 45 minutes (like the ten hours that preceded it) could have posed a deathly risk to a special needs infant, newborns who often need specialized care in delivery. It remains true that no one in the MSM will investigate the details of this truly bizarre story – and MSM journalists instead have devoted their efforts to demonizing any journalist who tries. (Emphasis mine)

Again, no mentions of Palin’s daughter Bristol. Instead, the writers focus on questions about Sarah Palin’s judgment. Sullivan again:

As I have said all along, I do not know what happened and the benefit of the doubt should go to Palin in the absence of actual journalism being committed. But the more her pregnancy with Trig becomes a campaign platform, a serious inquiry into exactly what happened in those few surreal days – days and decisions that she has made public and that reflect vital questions about her character and judgment – remains on the shelf of media deference. And the key witnesses who could verify it all – Palin herself, her husband, her doctor – still refuse to even take questions on the most bizarre series of events in Palin’s entire life. (Emphasis mine)

Having made no suggestions of a cover-up for a Bristol pregnancy, Purdum and Sullivan become screens onto which the bloggers first project their own paranoid tendencies and compact the two writers into a larger, monolothic enemy: “the media” hates Sarah. The media tells lies about Sarah. You cannot trust the media.

The third rule of paranoia is that “they” are all in it together. I use the word “paranoia” deliberately. Here’s the definition of that word from Merriam-Webster:

1: a psychosis characterized by systematized delusions of persecution or grandeur usually without hallucinations

2: a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others

Palin’s defensive mistrust of the press actually appeals to her demographic. Her angry denunciations of David Letterman appeal to them as well. Perhaps the best quote about the Vanity Fair article came from Taylor Marsh: “Sarah’s real trouble is she’s lugging around way too much stupid that still hasn’t been dispelled.” The same could be said of her base, for whom her particular brand of Teh Stupid™, Teh Crazy™, and Teh Wacky™ is not a negative at all, but in fact the reason they like her.

Yesterday, fifteen protesters showed up to denounce David Letterman’s joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter (the nineteen-year old, not the fourteen-year old). Palin’s political base was on full display:

The best way to counter this kind of Crazy™ is to give it free speech. Indeed, watching video like this only confirms my faith in the First Amendment.