David Frum is a bit of a nut, but his analysis of the Republican party is often very smart. Here he argues that Republicans should learn from the disaster that Sarah Palin has become for them:
Had John McCain won in 2008, we would have put an incompetent, deceitful, and vengeful person second in line to the presidency.
The people who promoted and celebrated the Palin pick have disavowed — or at least abandoned — their former enthusiasm. They no longer accuse those who objected to the pick of “elitism” or “snobbishness” or “misogyny.” It’s now considered very bad form among Republicans even to remember what the people said and wrote about Palin three years ago.Before Palin vanishes into her hard-earned obscurity, Republicans need an assessment and an accounting. But before the episode is consigned to forgetfulness, there are some lessons to be learned of urgent value for 2012 and beyond.
His basic point is that Republicans should stop supporting idiots, that once the starbursts have faded, you’re left with unpopularity and unelectability. That seems like an obvious point, but I myself was genuinely concerned, for about a week in early September 2008, that Palin would end up helping McCain a lot. McCain took a small lead in the polls and we were treated to silliness like this:
Still absorbing her speech last night, I’m trying to understand how Sarah Palin could be so apparently unfazed by her current situation: She’s in charge of a state government, just gave birth to a Down syndrome baby, has a pregnant teenage daughter and now it’s “Gotta run, John McCain wants me to be vice president.” But she’s not only coping with the slings and arrows; she has fired back with gusto. It must be more than just religious faith, ambition or ideology.
She reminds me of another prominent Republican woman from the West: former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. O’Connor was much more moderate ideologically than Palin. With two degrees from Stanford, she had high-level intellectual training, which Palin lacks. But in personal terms, there are a lot of parallels.
[….]Maybe there’s something about growing up in a challenging, male-dominated physical environment (desert, tundra), in a family where everyone’s expected to get his or her job done (and there’s no time for drama, fuss or introspection), that turns certain girls into very confident women — women who love to play against the big boys, and love to win.
Heh.