Mainstreaming the far right fringe

By Fester:

Unless Sarah Palin declines the nomination for Vice President, this will be my last post about her.  And at this point I think there is a small probability (<5%) that she will either decline the vice presidency nomination or be strongly encouraged to spend more time with her family in the next few weeks.  There is too much smoke here on too many fronts; the bridge to nowhere lie, the abuse of power history and therefore the troopergate investigation, the complete lack of informed worldview with which to agree or disagree with [ McCain has a worldview that I find scary as hell, but it is formed], the denial of global warming influenced at all by human activity, the oil windfall profits tax, and her ties to the crazy wing of the Republican Party.

Her entire purpose has been to cement the reliable GOP door knockers, which is overwhelmingly the right wing reactionaries, to the McCain campaign.  She is perceived to be one of them, and she is one of them.  Her views on abortion are way outside the mainstream (interesting that she mentioned choice in her statement on her daughter for if her political preferences were imposed, that word choice would be irrelevant), and she seems to willingly associate with the fringier parts of the GOP coalition. 

The first thing reported was that she was a major Buchanan supporter in 2000.  Remember Pat Buchanan ran in 2000 because George W. Bush was too damn liberal for him.  Bush was trying to get some proportion of the non-white and non-Cuban vote, and he did that to a certain degree. That was intolerable.  Buchanan at the time was not arguing the paleo-con line on US military adverturism that will get him occassionally quoted here and elsewhere with a significant disclaimer. He was still in full-culture war mode.  And if there was no horrendously designed ballot in Palm Beach County, he would have been a historical fringe footnote whose speeches sounded better in the original German.

And now we find out that Governor Palin was a member of a seccessionist party and even after becoming governor, sent well wishes to their most recent convention.  Wow.  Even the Republicans during national elections try to downplay their affinity towards dead white seccessionists.  This is definately fringy. 

As I am reading and learning more about Gov. Palin, I am reminded of David Niewart' s concept of mainlining the right wing fringe.  She is a member of the Republican coalition's Id base.  She's been for secession, denies the possiblity of human caused global warming, rails against taxes while having her hand out for federal expenditures, believes in denying choice and the information to make good choices, thinks abstinence only education is the right thing to do despite massive studies showing it is a public policy failure, and thinks that laws which constrain executive power are mere trifles. 

I personally think seeing the Republican Id on display is a net political positive for Democrats.  Yes, it energizes the Republican base, but at the cost of turning off the remainder of the country.  We saw that with Schiavo where the Republican Id interjected itself into a deeply personal and gut-wrenching decision of a conflicted family.  This action made a mockery of respecting individual or state rights when big government could impose their morality.  We saw this with Social Security when the college students in Pennsylvania chanted "Heave ho, Social Security has to go" as they imagined themselves atop a Randian dystopia.  We saw it in the days after Katrina when the people of the Lower 9th Ward were mocked for not being rich enough to flee. 

It is ugly, but it is a political goldmine of implicit contrasts for Democrats.  We don't hvae to do much besides pass the politicla popcorn.  Yet, despite knowing this, McCain chose Palin as his ambassador to the fringe because she is one of them.  They are becoming mainstream within the Republican Party.  And this will promote a very nasty internal series of purges as the GOP will lose more the more the Id controls the message. 

Comments

[anderson]

thinks abstinence only education is the right thing to do despite massive studies showing it is a public policy failure...

And, apparently, a personal family policy failure.