How Do I Thank Thee, Sarah Palin? You Betcha!

[malaise]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-heller/how-do-i-thank-thee-sarah_b_142329.html
<snip>
(With profound apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

How do I thank thee for running, Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways.

I thank thee to the depth and breadth and height my Democratic, Obama-loving, unemployed soul can reach, still exhausted mightily from the interminable weeks of horrific suspense, waiting to find out if what we were witnessing was a monumental comedy or a catastrophic, world-ending horror-movie.

For honestly believing that real life in our great land had become just one big reality show and that overnight, without benefit of wisdom, knowledge, intellect, experience, ethics, conscience or the merest trace of substance, you wouldn't get voted off the island, could/would dance better than anyone else or be selected the next American Idol rather than the next American Midol.

Oh, how I thank you now for running, Sarah Palin. My mirth is bottomless!

I thank you for Ted Stevens, for thinking you could run the Senate, for defiantly refusing to show us your medical records, for thinking you could somehow look cool on SNL, for providing exquisite fodder for Keith, Rachel, Jon, Bill Maher, Richard Lewis and other mondo-brilliant minds everywhere who managed to spin your transparent mendacity and fomented hatred into gold, as we all watched and waited, breathless, astonished, that you, so unworthy and unfit, even came close.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. K&R... imagine her in charge of this country, just imagine it really

talk about a living nightmare. Some would pine for the days of king george, you betcha, ;)

[malaise]

2. That was never going to happen

That the GOP would present this moron as a candidate given the reality that the country had turned against everything Republican suggests that they are living in an unbelievable bubble.

That the GOP would present this ignorant buffoon as a Vice Presidential candidate when they had already nominated the oldest candidate - a sick man who referred to his supporters as 'my fellow prisoners' was the final insult.

That even now 60% of GOP supporters see her as a future leader means that the Democratic party will have a mandate for at least two decades.

[POAS]

4. Also yep, you betcha there.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. Poetry threads in my DU!? ELITIST! n/t

[POAS]

5. Next thing ya know we'll be shopping at Saks with platinum cards.

[malaise]

6. Have you seen this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3591232

[ColbertWatcher]

14. Oh, yes I have! n/t

[Berry Cool]

7. I'll once again repeat (because I haven't yet pulled a muscle from patting my own back)

that when she first happened along, and DU was immediately flooded with upset, outraged, angry and worried threads of high anxiety that this most cynical of ploys might actually work, I described her as "the Baby Ruth bar in the swimming pool of DU."

I like to think that as many of us continued to fuss and panic over her, the media (even Katie Couric) functioned as our Bill Murray, showing us that not only was she not worth emptying the pool over, she was, actually, if you bit into her and got beneath the surface, quite tasty. A kind of unexpected gift, as it were.

I'm not really blaming anyone for being upset. In the past, crap like her has actually floated to the top, and we've all had to deal with the consequences. How were we to know it would not happen this time? Even I have posited the notion that although she's a laughing stock now, by 2012, with four years' more time to actually put something in that empty head, to write something on that blank slate, she could have the last laugh--and a scary one it would be indeed.

But now I don't worry about that so much. I see absolutely no inclination whatsoever that Sarah Palin actually wants to get anywhere by studying and learning and working hard. On the contrary, I think she envisioned herself as a sort of Alaskan Cinderella who by nothing other than her wonderful conservative hockey-mom virtues had been discovered by Prince Charming McCain and spirited away to rule the land at his side because, hey, the Neiman-Marcus slipper fit. Sure, Cinderella worked hard, but it wasn't her toil that won her the keys to the kingdom. It was her innate "virtue" and "beauty," and a fairy godmother who acted as a fixer.

That's the Sarah Palin dream: to end up as top banana just by bein' Sarah Palin, because, just as she is today, she's good enough, she's smart enough, and doggone it, people LIKE her! She's not interested in having to improve herself to get there.

I'm also not so worried as I used to be about her cadre of loyal fans who would love nothing more than to see her as president. I think now that they're a dying minority within the Republican Party. She's a very polarizing figure to them--either you love her or you can't stand her. And I think more of them can't stand her than love her, because to them she represents every cynical pandering tactic they've been using to win elections all these years, that has ended up doing nothing this year but dragging them down the toilet because the average American isn't interested anymore.

Thus, the image of Sarah Palin as "Baby Ruth bar in the DU swimming pool" becomes complete: Initially, she made us want to flee in fright, but examine matters further and we find that she's actually a sweet treat. She has managed to divide the Republican party into separate camps more effectively than anyone on the current scene has yet. And we all know what a famous Republican once said about a house divided against itself.

[malaise]

8. Great post

Profound!!

[Berry Cool]

9. Thanks. Actually, maybe it's not so much a Republican majority-minority thing

as it is "the power brokers" vs. "the base." As in, the guys who get people elected vs. all those average Joe Sixpacks and Joe the Plumbers who they count on to do the actual voting of their choices into office. "The base" loves and adores Palin--but it's a shrinking base, getting smaller as time goes on, no matter how vocal and strident it can make itself sound (think of all the hate-filled YouTube videos of her rallies). The power brokers realize this, and they're looking for someone more to the middle ground who actually has half a chance of capturing independents and even Dems the way Reagan did back in the day. Palin is NOT it. And I don't think now that she's ever going to be it. She has the raw materials, but she doesn't have the drive, nor is she smart enough to see what she might be able to achieve by actually shutting up and listening to someone who knows more than she does. Unless something changes drastically for her and she has a "come to Jesus" moment with the party and finally agrees to let them groom her into a Reagan-like figure who can appeal to a broader swath of voters and erase the image of herself that she created this year (and perhaps even joke about it), I just don't envision it happening.

[malaise]

10. I don't see that happening

because she has an incomprehensibly overinflated sense of self.

[sellitman]

11. This should be a thread all unto itself.

I suggest you flaunt the obvious talent you have.

This is brilliant!

[malaise]

12. I had the same thought

It's an excellent post.

[LibertyorDeath]

13. To our eternal advantage she's Batshit Crazy!