BartBlog

Sarah the Terror is a Sideshow Attraction Pushing the Wretched McCain to the Background of His Own Campaign

“You’re starting to feel real frustration because we are running out of time. Our message, the campaign’s message, isn’t connecting.”
– Saul Anuzis, Michigan Republican Party Chairman, as quoted by the NY Times, Oct. 11, 2008.

Who is McPalin appealing to these days? Not Joe Sixpack, nor Hockey Moms and Dads – they roundly booed the Alaska Governor at the Philadelphia Flyers opener last Saturday; not ‘Lunch Bucket’ Workers; not ‘Reagan Democrats’ (the last two categories joining the liberal Rockefeller Republican in extinction long ago). Nope, all of the voters who fit those media-hyped pigeon holes have been suffering the pain and remorse of living in King Junior’s Politics for Profit United States of Katrina for the last couple of years.

These days, aside from the Party Hacks – that random collection of reliable bobbleheads: GOP office-seekers, low-level local staff, other small fry and their kin — it seems the only faction of American humanity — and I use that term advisedly — showing up in large numbers to see Gov. Snow Job and her doddering Grandpa running mate are a type not much discussed but well-known by the Punditrocracy and the Big Media — let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Screwloose. These are not just Low Information Voters — they are that, to be sure — but the Lowest Common Denominator loonies and Hate-for-Jesus Christians who spend their lives forwarding brainless emails assuring the reader that prayer is what the troops in Iraq really desire more than anything else; who want the Ten Commandments hanging off every government building; who believe we were founded as a Christian theocracy regardless of the evidence to the contrary; who violently oppose the idea of someone they don’t know marrying someone else they don’t know of the same sex because it’s written in the Bible, yet still chow down on pork and shellfish; who equate ‘liberal’ with ‘traitor’ because comic geniuses like Ann Coulter told them so; who perpetually mistake actors who play cowboys for real cowboys; who go to check when someone calls asking if their refrigerator is running; who want more war with those they perceive as terrorists, even after being told to turn the other cheek by the founder of their faith; who know nothing about Islam, yet believe it is an ‘evil’ religion; who resist scientific proof of anything unless it comports with their bizarre, pre-fabulated religious beliefs; who focus on abortion as state-sanctioned murder while they applaud the death penalty and celebrate the carnage of war; who wallow with Rebel Yell pride in their ignorance and let themselves be suckered by slick Republican hucksters to vote against their own interests; who viscerally believe in an End Times scenario and subsequent Rapture that never appeared in the Bible; who think Serial Liar Sarah Palin is ready to be president since she’s just like them: a card-carrying member of the rusty-truck-up-on-blocks, fuckin’ redneck, hootin’-and-hollerin’ Kallikaks ‘ignorati’; a goofball fundamentalist Christian yahoo who shares their demented white-trash-wet-dream ‘values’ which include a spiteful racism that would make Joseph Goebbels grin and a preposterous gullibility that has made a creepy Messiah pimp like Pat Robertson rich.

Palin’s singular talent is that she can deliver her pre-scripted message competently: It’s acceptable for you to vent your hateful bigotry on McCain’s black opponent since he’s conveniently a friend of terrorists.

That said, it appears the McCainiacs running the Palin traveling carnival have misunderstood why so many people turn up at her events — she’s now a cultural phenomenon, a Britney Spears freak of nature slathered over by the supermarket tabloids, as well their big brothers in the MSM. Many Gawkers of the American Idiocracy show up not because they endorse her message, but just to get a look at the Two-Headed Geek in person. She’s a sideshow attraction now more than a serious candidate for political office. In a campaign rally last week, a good portion of the crowd started leaving after Palin was done speaking, giving the hapless McCain a view of their departing backs. It’s Palin and McCain these days, from the same lineage as Barnum and Bailey.

A story told about the recently-convicted O.J. Simpson illustrates this point: Simpson had the idea that the people who asked him for autographs and to pose with him for pictures must also have believed that he was innocent. Not so — most actually thought he was guilty, but he was a celebrity curiosity; another oddball sight for the Idiocratic Gawkers to slow down and drive by, as they do at horrible highway accidents. Sane viewers of recent Palin-McCain rallies recognize their similarity to multi-vehicle crack-ups and, if she keeps inflaming their passionate hatreds, the blood may soon flow as well.

As Wisconsin’s Tommy Thompson, Florida’s Charlie Crist and any other Republican with more than one brain cell jump clear of McCain’s Trash Talk Express plummeting full speed to the bottom of the chasm, it’s become clear that it is Palin who is really running for president; the pitiable McCain assigned a seat in the back, his eyes tightly shut and fingers crossed that a slight course correction by his Rove-trained driver might make all the difference to his chances as he barrels headlong into the Grand Canyon of electoral defeats.

“I look up, about five minutes into McCain’s address and see a steady stream of people walking out of the rally. They just came to see Palin apparently.”
– “Palin Steals McCain Rally: People Walk Out After Her Speech,” Rachel Weiner, The Huffington Post, Sept. 18, 2008.

“But there is little doubt that Palin is the main attraction. Before each rally, crowds chant ‘Sarah, Sarah,’ and Republicans come away gushing, calling her ‘adorable’ Some even leave after Palin’s speech without hearing McCain.”
– “Among Republicans, Palin overshadows McCain,” AFP, Sept. 22, 2008.

Yes, she’s drawing a crowd, but for all the wrong reasons and, if you’re a humiliated John McCain, it must be dawning on you that you’re never going to be elected president this way and all of your other options are gone.

It wouldn’t surprise me if McCain — to restore his primacy, redeem himself with rational conservatives, and tempt some good publicity in the waning days before the election — sent the insufferable Palin brood packing back to Wasilla, and went down to defeat with Tom Ridge or even Joe Lieberman at his side. He has nothing to lose that he hasn’t already lost.