To paraphrase a recent Defense Secretary, the problem common to so many Republicans (from voters, to the Drudgebots who populate the comments section, to S. Palin herself) is that they simply don't know how much they are are unaware of. But what is worse - they don't seem to care, and wear their ignorance as a sign of "purity" and Americaness.

When Bill Kristol, the McCain "vetters", and ultimately McCain himself were presented with Palin - they literally didn't know much they didn't know about Palin. Sure- she seemed attractive, spoke about theses that they felt would attract voters. And they all assumed that she had the personality, smarts, and education necessary to make a good Vice President. Sure - she MUST have a good team of advisors (whose counsel she generally followed), she must know how to handle tough questions from the media. She was Governor of a State!

The ultimate irony was seeing Palin standing in front of the signs with the words "Country First" on them. (Never mind that the phrase sounded oddly like the name of a crooked mortgage company). Palin, with her mangled syntax, clanging ignorance, questionable personal and financial ethics - so obviously was not chosen to put the "Country First."

The charge that Kristol, Schmidt, and - yes - John McCain need to face is not from the organs of Government. It is from the national press, from their colleagues, and from the American public. Thanks to their recklessness - we came very close to having a dreadfully unqualified person a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States.

Kristol is wrong about everything.

Unfortunately SarahPalin is not going away. She is going to be a national Republican power for a decade, and the likely nominee in 2012.

Republican can paint their hates, resentments and "everyone picks on us" attitudes on her canvas. And that is what the will so.

I don't know anything or care about your father (although I certainly don't wish him ill) but don't go wagging your pedigree in front of people and expect to be appreciated!

MY POINT EXACTLY..

sheesh..

Sarah WAS - IS - and WILL BE a godsend - and I could thank the dudes enough who gave us HER!

Palin was at least as qualified as he. She did, after all, get that bill passed to create a massive natural gas pipeline built from the North Slopes of Alaska to the midwest. This was something the power boys in Alaska had tried to do for years with no success, mainly because they wanted to give the oil companies everything they wanted. Palin made the oil companies compromise and was able to get the deal through. US News downplayed this by saying she only accomplished this because it was bipartisan. Funny, I seem to recall the media rhapsodizing about Bush being so bipartisan as governor and pressuring Obama not to pass health care reform just with Democrats.

In contrast, Bush had two bankrupt companies to his name, serious charges of insider trading against him, and a stint as a governor in a state that vests most of the power in the lieutenant governor. Being governor of Texas is an extremely easy job which is how Bush managed to put in so few hours on the job. Heck the Texas legislature only meets for months a year - every other year! (Read Scott McClellans description of this in his book "What Happened".)

Yet the Republican party leaders chose this abysmally unqualified, immature man to be their candidate to run against Gore. I remember reading that the power brokers of the Republican party hand-picked Bush as their best candidate and discouraged others from competing against him. Apparently the fact that his name was Bush, he was popular in Texas, and was a conservative Christian was all that counted. Of course if the mainstream media had done its job instead of praising Bush as a regular guy - must have been those demeaning nicknames he gave them - and not trashed Gore as a boring wonk, the party could not have succeeded with this bizarre choice.

The problem lies with the entire Republican party, not just a few. It has gone so far off the rails, Eisenhower would not recognize it. As one who believes in a robust two-party system I find it deeply disturbing that Republicans are so out of touch with reality. The fact that they often succeed is even more troubling.

Mr. Conason, your article is exactly right! Some of the Comments question why journalists are still writing about Palin: because she keeps popping up in the news, and her appearances are not improving!

For some reason the GOP loves for their leaders to be stupid.

Ronald Reagan

Dan Quayle

George W. Bush

Sarah Palin

it's extremely difficult for the VP choice on the failed ticket to capture the presidency the next time. John Edwards, anyone?

Of course that person enjoys name recognition going out of the gate, but new faces will come along to capitivate. Simply because they can't be identified now doesn't mean they won't appear.

I had to chuckle when I read Victor Davis Hanson, "Her resignation will be forgotten in two years." Don't the Republicans even maintain the pretense elective office is a form of public service? Or is it an acceptable path to personal enrichment as you go in and out of the revolving door?

Whatever Sarah Palin does, or doesn't do, will be applauded by her fan club. But there's not enough of 'em to elect her.

If choosing subpar candidates was an indictable offense (as Joe Conason would like to see) few political operatives would be living outside prison walls. John Edwards is like Sarah Palin with a dick!

I am almost positive she's giving that guy a handjob.

Texas was settled in the nineteenth century by immigrants from the Netherlands and Denmark (among other places); it is basically the southern end of the Great Plains. But it never experienced the feudalism of the Old South with its cotton plantations, although in what can only be considered hilarious irony, the popular heroes of the Alamo died trying to defend the area from Mexicans who would have abolished slavery and thus the dreams of recent settlers looking to duplicate the economy of the southeastern states. Texas was basically more of Indiana, an agrarian society of small farmers and ranchers with livestock. It was never industrialized like the Northeast or the West coast. The discovery of oil in the 1920s changed that! Texas went straight to postindustrialism on the backs of black gold! Austin, for example, was from its founding a community exclusively devoted to regional government and later education: that's all! No work for muscles! You couldn't make a dime in Austin except with your brain; that's why no one there bothered to raise the hypermasculine kind of male children that California (a nineteenth-century industrial state) loves so much: there was no employment for them anyway. The Connecticut aristocratic Bush family who made their fortune in nineteenth-century railroad equipment (originally in Ohio) parachuted into Texas after the Second World War to get a piece of the action that Wall Street knew was coming in the postwar auto utopia our overlords planned for this country (and which finds its ultimate expression in California's dystopias). The recent George Bush's father, a dim bulb himself, repeatedly tried to get elected to political office in the state but couldn't get elected dog catcher! Gerald Ford finally appointed him head spook as reward for his repeated but failed efforts for the Republican party! Finally, the Bushes had been hanging around for so long, people must have assumed that they were natives, I guess! Well, you know what they say about the memory of the American public!