The Appalling Sarah Palin

Palin Pick Poisonous:

All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up nine percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favor Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee.

And in a possible indication that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt Mr. McCain’s image, voters said they had much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people for his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.

Lately, Palin has attacked Obama for "associations" with Palestinian professor, Rashid Khalidi.

I have said much about this, but to reiterate: The rhetoric implies that associating with a Palestinian sympathetic to his own people makes you suspect. And I stand by my statement that this is worse than McCarthyism since communists select their comrades, while no one pre-selects the ethnic group into which one is born. Absolutely loathsome, demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of the nature of free association.

Hang on, though, that's not the only constitutional freedom Palin misunderstands. According to Palin, media questioning of her campaign rhetoric abrogates her freedom of speech. Andrew Sullivan makes the call on this one, and he is dead on balls accurate, here.

Palin's spoken "thoughts" in the interview imply a worldview so constrained and petty it assumes that proper respect for her freedom of speech requires that public commentary contain no attempt to parse, analyze, or criticize the content of her speech acts. So, she's either the center of existence or she has never read the Constitution of the United States.

The always awesome Glenn Greenwald offers much additional and much savvier analysis:

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers. In the Palin worldview, the First Amendment was meant to ensure that powerful political officials such as herself would not be "attacked" in the papers. Is it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?

Let's see, Palin has it backwards. Like the neo-cons who advise her had it entirely backwards about Iraq, by which I mean, every prediction they made was not just wrong, but as entirely and completely wrong as it is possible to be in normal, everyday reality. Next, she exhibits profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, and a few other things about the Constitution, such as the role of the Vice President. Finally, her display of ignorance probably can't be exceeded by anyone running for high office in the U.S. Wow. Appalling.

And that brings us to a real stumper of a question. How the heck did she get the nod. Who fooled whom? Did Palin completely fool a faction of the conservative intelligentsia, or did the Weekly Standard select her to be their mouthpiece? (I realize this is one of those questions along the lines of, "Have you stopped beating your wife, yet?")

Richard Cohen recounts how the conservative intelligentsia and Sarah Palin hooked up:

It is not "the stature of the person nominated" that matters, it is the person's ideology. Miers not only had questionable credentials but questionable ideological purity as well -- what the National Review called "the substance and the muddle of her views." Palin is a down-the-line rightie, so her inexperience, her lack of interest in foreign affairs, her numbing provincialism and her gifts for fabrication (Can we go over that "bridge to nowhere" routine again?) do not trouble her ideological handlers. Let her get into office. They will govern.

Once again, conservatives have a problem with the whole "reality" thing, as opposed to the perceptions they seek to spin in the heads of voters.

Here is a more detailed look at the conservative cruise, Sarah Palin's crafting her political appeal, and the variance between her narrative about herself and troublesome reality.

Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington élite than her rhetoric has suggested. Paulette Simpson, the head of the Alaska Federation of Republican Women, who has known Palin since 2002, said, “From the beginning, she’s been underestimated. She’s very smart. She’s ambitious.” John Bitney, a top policy adviser on Palin’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, said, “Sarah’s very conscientious about crafting the story of Sarah. She’s all about the hockey mom and Mrs. Palin Goes to Washington—the anti-politician politician.”

And

Upon being elected governor, Palin began developing relationships with Washington insiders, who later championed the idea of putting her on the 2008 ticket. “There’s some political opportunism on her part,” Bitney said. For years, “she’s had D.C. in mind.” He added, “She’s not interested in being on the junior-varsity team.”

Here's more:

From the start of her political career, Palin has positioned herself as an insurgent intent on dislodging entrenched interests. In 1996, a campaign pamphlet for her first mayoral run—recently obtained by The New Republic—strikes the same note of populist resentment that Palin did at the Convention: “I’m tired of ‘business as usual’ in this town, and of the ‘Good Ol’ Boys’ network that runs the show here.” Yet Palin has routinely turned to members of Washington’s Old Guard for help.

Appalling, just appalling.

UPDATE--Vanity Fair piles on Palin's fundamental ignorance of basic Constitutional liberties:

For a vice-presidential candidate, her interpretation of the Bill of Rights is spectacularly amusing and frightening.

Just Appalling.