Will Sarah Palin Replace Dick Cheney As Viral Neoconservatism's New Host?

THE PEOPLE BETWEEN JOHN AND CINDY McCAIN
ARE ACTUALLY SMALLER THAN THEY APPEAR

In principle, there was never anything particularly wrong with the political movement known as neoconservatism, which after all was a reaction to failed policies of the 1960s and 1970s. But neoconservatism had become so discredited by the time that Dick Cheney and others finished wringing the idealism out of it that even Francis Fukayama, the movement's contemporary intellectual godfather, renounced the Bush Doctrine and endorsed Barack Obama for president.

Voters did as well, delivering a rebuke on Election Day so stinging that not just neoconservatism seemed to be in tatters, but the entire Republican Party, as well, which suffered a defeat so encompassing that not even the historic Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964 was as bad.

Why not as bad considering that Barry Goldwater got spanked far worse than McCain? Because Goldwater's humiliation was the catalyst for a remade GOP that would lead to the Reagan Revolution and a Republican hold on the White House for 20 of the last 28 years.

No such remaking is in the offing as 2008 slouches to an end, and it looks like cosmetics and not amputation of the party's cancerous limbs will suffice for the one-time Party of Lincoln. The GOP, it seems, has no time for wandering in the wilderness and may shrink into being a regional player -- the Deep South, of course -- a party whose trademark will be not the Big Tent of yore but a pickup truck with gun rack and Confederate flag stickers.

Yet even though voters would seem to have put a stake through neoconservatism's heart, reports of its death are exaggerated.

Speaking of cosmetics, Spencer Ackerman astutely observes that the most viral form of neoconservatism is now seeking to use queen of mean Sarah Palin as its next host just as it has used George Bush, Cheney and John McCain.

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It would have been a signal relief if Palin and the First Dude had returned to Alaska never to be heard from again after standing in the shadow of John and Cindy McCain on Election Night, their body language unmistakably betraying anger as the Unhappy Warrior conceded defeat and graciously congratulated Obama amid boos from his ungracious base.

But we knew that wasn't going to happen, right? And so we are being diddled with post-election revelations that Palin is an even bigger idiot than she was portrayed on Saturday Night Live, including morsels like her not knowing that Africa is a continent and her inability to identify the member nations of NAFTA.

Foreign policy is indeed not the Alaska governor's strong suit, but then she doesn't have one save for that snappy red number with the gold buttons that she bought on the Republican National Committee's dime at a high-end Minneapolis department store, one of the $150,000-plus in profligate purchases that a party lawyer reportedly has been dispatched to Alaska to inventory and retrieve.

But this has not kept a host of Republican pundits, including William Kristol, whose father Irving first lit the neocon flame, from declaring that Palin got shafted.

Kristol the Younger, outed as a Palin mole at the New York Times, has been so consistently wrong this election season that he can be dismissed at this stage in his career as a smirking crank whose attraction to Palin has less to do with her "potential" as a future Republican star than the fuzzy feeling that she seems to stir in the nether regions of he and other necocon males.

As it is, Kristol and Kompany are utterly untroubled by Palin's vapidness, let alone the fact that she is a shameless pathological liar, and you can bank on them being cheerleaders for her to be that new neocon viral host.

Less easy to understand are pundits like Rick Moran, a thoughtful conservative whose explications on history, politics and policy at Rightwing Nuthouse are among the best anywhere.

Rick basically lost his mind after Palin's deus ex machina entrance onto the national stage, writing that she "is like a virgin in the Sultan's harem . . . the corrupting influence of power has yet to perform its dastardly sorcery on her and turn the pure as the driven Alaskan snow child into the coldly calculating political computer that will probably be her legacy once history is done with her."

I am relieved to report that Rick's man crush is in remission and he now acknowledges in so many words that Palin is indeed a cipher, or as Daniel Larison puts it, that ignorance is not strength. Oh yeah, and that elections have consequences.

But Rick uses pretzel logic in declaring it "outrageous" that McCain's electoral college landslide loss is being blamed on the virgin. Worse yet, he endorses Operation Leper, a Stalinesque online round-up of the people smearing Palin being led by Erick Erickson at RedState with Rush Limbaugh riding shotgun, two guys who between them probably haven't had an introspective moment since they short-sheeted a counselor's bed at summer camp and had their canteen privileges revoked.

So much for rebuilding the party.

While it is outrageous that McCain's handlers tried to sell a bill of goods in foisting on voters the Wasilla Hillbillies, as they were wont to call Palin and her tribe as the ticket spluttered toward the finish line, the bigger story is that Palin not only failed to rise to the challenges that running with the big dogs presented, but in nine short weeks drove away many of the very voters whom McCain was courting and desperately needed.

The Unhappy Warrior can be blamed for the pick, but not what the pick did with the opportunity.

The election of Obama, whom Rick has treated with atypical courtesy for a right-of-center commentator while nevertheless not pulling his punches, is amazing for many reasons, but there is one statistic that for me is the tale of the tape.

McCain need to take Pennsylvania if he had a snowball's chance, and he and Palin made something like 30 appearances there in the closing days of the campaign. But when all was shouted and done, the vote margin in Montgomery County, once the strongest for the GOP in Pennsylvania, was an astonishing 60 to 39 percent for the terrorist coddling guy with the funny-sounding name. The Hockey Mom must share much of the blame for this debacle.

The biggest problem for Republicans as they head into 2012 is attracting candidates with the gravitas and depth of an Obama, Biden, Clinton, Dodd or Richardson when all they can offer is a mindset that has to be a huge turn-off for anyone with those qualities.

Perversely, that situation makes Sarah Palin an ideal viral host for the neocons. Like George Bush in 2000, she is an empty vessel into which they can pour their animosities and causes. Only not as bright, if that's possible.