Sarah Palin Who by Earthprof

Sarah Palin Who by Earthprof

All we can talk about is Sarah Palin. All the press can talk about is Sarah Palin. ABC had all their competition breathlessly awaiting each new excerpt as the teasers were rolled out in advance of the full airing of the interview with Charlie Gibson.

We Google madly, we drive up the traffic volume of Alaska Bloggers looking for each new nugget in the seemingly endless number of gaffs and scandalettes that make up the fabric of Ms. Palin’s life. So much time , energy and syllables spent speculating about the failures of the McCain vetting process not to catch all these problems. How did they not know she was so wacko?

Uh, folks, maybe they did know? Maybe not each little detail and nugget, but what if they did know that she would be, ahem "colorful" [why, yes, by colorful I do mean wacky and completely out of the mainstream] and controversial. And maybe that is exactly why the campaign picked her.

Please recall the WONDERFUL position almost ANY Democratic candidate could look forward to this year. Most of America hates Bush/Cheney and the reason America is even more fed up with Congress, is because of Congress’s repeated and appalling failures to either stand up to the Bush cabal [the never ending Rubber Stamp problem] or to hold the Administration accountable in the face of obvious and repeated violation of both substantive and procedural law.[When is somebody going to enforce that subpoena on Harriet Meyers?]

When we are wasting our time fulminating over Sarah Palin, what are we missing the opportunity to talk about?

Well:

  • We are not talking about the lying to the American people, the UN and especially to Congress to defraud Congress into voting for the AUMF. Lies about both why the AUMF was even necessary and the way in which it would be used if passed.
  • We are not talking about Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, or the ghost prisons where the US is hiding prisoners who have been "disappeared".
  • We are not talking about how the Bush Administration took the budget surplus it inherited from the Clinton Administration and squandered it into a record deficit.
  • We are not talking about the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch and after he was specifically warned that Al Q wanted to use planes as missiles and derisively dismissed those who tried to get him to focus on this issue saying "it’s OK, you’ve covered your ass."
  • We are not talking about the utter failure of Bush’s "faith based initiative" .
  • We are not talking about the fact that 7 years after 9/11 we still don’t have a meaningful cargo screening system.
  • We are not talking about a crumbling economy, bank failures, or home foreclosure rates that remind folks of the Great Depression.

I could go on and on, or you could just read Hugh’s List.

Most important of all, we are not talking about how after getting pwned by Bush in 2000, McSame sold out virtually every scruple or moral principle he might ever have had and LITERALLY embraced Bush and voted with Bush 90% of the time.

The Republicans came into this electoral cycle with their "brand " in tatters. GOP candidates were afraid to be seen with Bush and didn’t want his endorsement. Hell, many of them were even afraid to go to the GOP convention. There was much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands about how could the GOP rebrand itself away from being the party of Bush.

Well my darlings, They have managed the impossible. The GOP in one night, one freakin’ night, went from the "Party of Bush" to the "Party of Palin".

This is not only bad news for some skinny guy with a Harvard law degree and a funny name. This is REALLY bad for any Dem candidate on the ticket this year.

Folks, we gotta get our eyes back on the ball. And we have to steer the national dialogue BACK TO STUFF THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS. Why do you think she issued a press release about her pregnant teenager? So she could get into a fight with the media.

Why do you think she is continuing the lie about always opposing the Bridge to Nowhere? To get into a fight with the media.

Why do you think they wanted a candidate with Troopergate, Librariangate, and all the other salacious issues that belong on Jerry Springer? So that we would waste energy and precious time giggling over this stuff instead doing the right thing–specifically tying Bush/Cheney around the neck of each and every GOP candidate, starting with McSame, like the millstone they are and then throwing that GOP candidate overboard to sink under the weight of Bush/Cheney failures.

Going forward, for me, Sarah Palin? Oh yeah, she’s that wacko with the caribou blood obsession, so what? Instead, let’s talk about the price of home heating oil this winter. Let’s talk about how we are going to get out of Iraq. Let’s talk about bank failures. Let’s talk about the fact that Osama’s still out there laughing into his beard at us.

We must take back the GOP from being the Party of Palin, and return it to it’s rightful and genuine branding as the Party of Bush/Cheney.