By Hank Stram, October 2008
The Republican Party used to be a party of ideas, granted, they were stupid and fucked-up ideas, but they were ideas. The Sarah Palin ordeal, however, shows that they are only interested in ideologies: theocracy and corporatocracy. The Palin pick was nothing more than a hunk of red meat for the evangelicals who, because of the their hatred of gay abortions, will gladly support the corporatists — no matter how much the corporate agenda works against their self interests and runs afoul of the tenets of their faith. But that’s nothing new; Republican voters have been “kissing the whip” since at least as far back as Reagan’s first term. What’s new is the level of cynicism to which “We The People” are being subjected to. When the non-entity Dan Quayle was introduced as Bush pere’s running mate, an argument could be made that he was at least marginally qualified to be vice president. It was a weak argument – something along the lines of “Bush is healthy and the vice president doesn’t really do anything, anyway.” Plus, everyone understood that the real reason Quayle was added to the Bush ticket was because Poppy Bush was an effete New England patrician who needed a handsome Midwestern frat-boy to appeal to the horny housewife demographic (later to become the soccer-mom demographic and now the hockey-mom demographic). Quayle proved to be the doofus we all knew he was, and he vanished into obscurity within minutes of Clinton’s inauguration. Enter G.W. Bush, the most cynical pick for president since Warren Harding, both of them proxies for big business, handpicked and installed by their corporate overlords. Although Bush has gone on to become the worst president in the history of our country and an embarrassment on a global (perhaps even galactic) scale, there was at least a scintilla of evidence that the 1999 G.W. Bush, before the dementia kicked in fully, was marginally qualified to govern. Most of us in reality land were aghast at the sputtering, know-nothing dry-drunk from Texas from day one, but there was a small chance we’d end up with another Hoover or a Grant — not another Nero.
Of Bush’s myriad transgressions, one of the most galling (besides that whole lying-us-into-a-war-that-cost-thousands-upon-thousands-of-lives-and-all-our-money thing) is the manner in which he only seems to work for those who voted for him. In Palin’s selection, we see something similar but even more sinister: conservative politicians, conservative pundits, Palin’s own handlers, and even Palin herself, are brazenly lying about her suitability for the position of VP – all the while knowing that “normals” know they’re lying. And they don’t care one iota that we know they’re lying because the lie isn’t for us; it’s for the people who will be hoodwinked by this bullshit – the same people who still believe Dubya is a serious leader who also isn’t a demented troglodyte. With a “sensible people know I’m full of shit” countenance, they’ll look right into the camera and tell us that Sarah Palin has foreign policy bona fides because Alaska is near Russia. This nasty little bit of pro-forma theater for the boobs and dolts who are already going to vote for her is politics at its most cynical. Like Bush’s “government-only-for-my-supporters” but worse, selling Sarah Palin is a matter of “we know you know we’re lying, but we don’t care because the lie isn’t for you; it’s for the people who support us.”
And it gets even worse.
Conservative intellectuals (soon to become an oxymoron) who should know better are even willing to throw themselves under the bus and look stupid on Palin’s behalf. During Palin’s recent “interview” with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, it became obvious that Palin had never heard of the Bush Doctrine – a doctrine that represents perhaps the most radical shift in foreign policy in our nation’s history. When Gibson asked her if she was familiar with the Bush Doctrine, Palin’s face might as well have said, “Fuck you, Charlie. Why don’t you tell me what the Bush Doctrine is?” In the wake of her miserable performance, conservative pundits like John Fund (Rush Limbaugh’s ghost writer and physical assailant of wealthy heiresses) appeared on television and in print and proclaimed that they, too, would have had trouble articulating the central tenet(s) of the Bush Doctrine. This comes off as a bit insincere considering that some of these people were among the earliest architects and advocates of the policy. It also illustrates that national security, the GOP’s supposed trump card, isn’t all that important to them. In reality, what Palin brings to the table is a professed hatred for taxes and fealty to the oil companies. Modulo these twin ideologies, all GOP candidates are fungible and no amount of cynicism in the service of their installation is unwarranted. This is what the GOP has become.
At least she never shot anyone in the face.