Mr. Conason,

Thanks for the excellent article. Were I to quibble with you it would not be about content; rather, it would be regarding your restraint in describing just how absurdly, dangerously bad the Palin selection was.

William Kristol-- neoconservative nabob, magazine editor, and imbecile-at-large, shouldn't bear the lion's share of the blame here. After all, he's been so consistently wrong in his support of the Right-- yet they continue hanging on every word as if he were channeling Ronald Reagan. Kristol apparently provided the verbal Viagra these operatives needed to convince themselves that John McCain could pull out a win, if only a gentler version of Ann Coulter were available.

Let's step back for a moment: after ONE luncheon with Governor Palin, Kristol convinces himself that she's the Real Deal, a game-breaker and just the fresh young thing to counter the predictable sameness of the Republican challengers available in 2007. A year later, and working from that paradigm, it was easy for Kristol to make the (short) leap to believing Palin was the only possible counter-weight to McCain's obvious mortality.

In fairness, it's the Gang of Four-- Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, Charles Black, and Mark Salter-- who should be banned from every being associated with a political campaign again. They're on-the-ground operatives, for goodness sake, and they committed an unbelievable error: suspension of their own critical thinking. How could they possibly believe in Palin, when the evidence of her shortcomings and nuttiness was palpable?

The simple answer is that they believed their own hype. They recited the same creaking buzzwords, ("exceptionalism", indeed!), followed the painfully mistaken formula, ("Get a women, we'll pick up the Hillary vote."), and most importantly, believed that Barack Obama was nothing more than a fancy suit.

In hindsight, there were two amazing events on November 4th. The first was the election of a black man. The second was the electorate choosing a winner based on issues, as opposed to a grinning, winking caricature.

Joe, you have joined the endless fount of useless haters who waste time ranting and raving about Palin...the obsession that some seem to have with her is not only sick but frankly downright pathologically frightening to witness...Sarah has become the Hillary of yesteryear, a veritable lightning rod for either people to love her passionately, or loathe her with a very twisted, sick, and sometimes demented relish. Since you are a political hack, I would expect you to jump on the bandwagon of those who see Palin as a punching bag for all those the left wishes to demonize.

Frankly, obsessing about Palin really is a tremendous waste of time, and rather lazy for anyone at this point to engage in, since so many have been doing it endlessly to the point of ennui...I don't care about what Sarah Palin says and does...neither should any of you...unless she is somehow threatening to you, which you need to examine along with so many others for why that is so, what she does is of no concern to you or anyone else. I think fellow columnist Camille Paglia was spot on in her column about her...somehow stock issue liberals like yourself seem to be clueless about her appeal to some; it seems in recent polls that the vast majority of Americans really don't find her resignation anything to get exorcised about, although they do draw the line at stupid attacks, rampant among jokesters such as the pathetically boring David Letterman.

Hello

If she can't sue you Mr. Conason she may well drive down and beat you up.

-- Support our Tropes

I am afraid Joe better watch out...

her nomination was a mistake? Is he capable of such a mea culpa apart from the matter that his survival depends on pretending his brand remains untarnished?

I'll be checking out European real estate should such a nightmare come to pass...

-- vaporland

You better start looking now...the way things are going, with independents fleeing Obama like the plague, the picture for '12 may very well look bright for yes, even Sarah...although she may strike one as the dumbest of the dumb, we have been through this before...no one gave Reagan, no bright bulb, a chance, nor did one think Bush would ever take office...so wishing her away is a very silly move by the left...ignoring her would be so much smarter...the more attention and obsession we give about her, the more she becomes an issue in '12...

In a movie I once saw a key character explained the 1 unbreakable rule for con men: "A con man must never fall for his own con". If was OK as long as Mr. McCain's handlers tried to foist Ms. Palin on whatever has become of the Republican base. This is the same approach the holy rollin' Bush Administration used for the evangelicals. Religious fundamentalists were pandered to for their votes while being secretly riduculed as gullible rubes.

However, a con man of the first order, Mr. Rove never believed any of the stuff he told the evangelicals. He was just playing them as marks. I think the real problems started when Mr. McCain and some of the members of his staff tried to rationalize what they had done; to convince themselves that that the 'Moose hunter' really was qualified to be VP.

I was off by only 6 years. Well, an 18 year old today is about equal to a 12 year old 30 years ago.

Sorry about the public education system and all the bad programming on the tube.

It's not your fault kid. You never had a chance.

You must be talking about your fantasy Sarah Palin, because the real Sarah Palin is incoherent when she speaks. She could use a few ums and ahs to give herself some time to organize her thoughts.

Of course her thoughts are mostly garbled platitudes and hackneyed phrases. That might impress you and the rest of her fans, but thed rest of us are left scratching our heads.

Obviously you have never attended an anti-war demonstration, or for that matter, ANY other slightly less that REPUBLICAN or DEMOCRATIC approved gathering.

Now go down and enlist so you can make your next post from the other side of the world.

Socialists and Libertarians are both against the corporatocracy, the plutocracy, the warmongers, the scammers and the MSM. Both are for humans over institutions. I could go on, but I suspect you lack the ability to think in terms other than those articulated by your corporate masters.

You will figure it out sometime in the next 30 years.