September 20th 2008 22:47
Almost everyone was hailing Sarah Palin's nomination to be a "co-candidate" with John McCain as a brilliant strategic move, sure to rally the base and draw independent voters too. Well, for a few days, everything seemed that way. But now it seems the wave might have crested. The pick of Palin may actually prove to be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back of the American fundamentalist movement, at least from the point of it being a strong national political power. The brash move meant to placate the unhappy and depressed evangelical al-Qaeda (it means "the base") is likely to backfire, wounding the base deeply.
The exposure of Sarah Palin as a fraud on so many levels has already driven down her support. From lying about the big things - like saying she fights waste and pork while the record shows she was at the trough all the way through her political career. Loved the "bridge to nowhere" until it became a hot potato, didn't you Sarah? But it's also the little lies that show the nature of her character. Like lying about how many people are at crowds.
It's interesting - I began this article after the Monday collapse of the stock market in America. A person could literally watch and the Palin-McCain ticket slid backward, unable to offer anything but platitudes and jingoisms while McCain tried to run from his comments about the "fundamentals of the economy" being just fine. Then came Wednesday. Another big hit on the worldwide stock markets.
The Palin-McCain team is floundering for a message about the economy that doesn't sound like what their real policies are, and it's becoming more difficult every day. The buzz is wearing off, and America is coming to grips with the fact that neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin are the least bit competent when it comes to economics. The horrible failures of supply-side "trickle down" monetary policies are resonating throughout the economies of the entire world, at one level or another. A sizable portion of the American electorate has finally had enough.
They are finished with being lied to in order to get their vote, and are ready for change. Barack Obama has emerged as the leader who can bring a new direction to Washington that Palin or McCain cannot. The promise of more of the same is driving voters away from the Republican ticket. This isn't shaping up to be a slight win, but a landslide. A true mandate for social change. And as it looks like it might turn out, we can thank the hubris of the right.
They thought Americans would, one more time, be just dumb enough, or just ignorant enough, or just distracted enough, to fall for all of the same old crap. To continue the mind-boggling practice of voting in opposition to their interests. The evil alliance between the evangelical right and corporate greed quite nearly pushed this country into a chasm. While we are still on the edge of that chasm, we at least now have some hope. For if we can step back from it now, it just might be in time.
The Palin-McCain ticket is going to be so far behind that cheating won't even be possible. The extremism and obvious inadequacies will drive the independent vote to the left. Barack Obama will be the next president, and may well be the next Roosevelt. Yes, once again, a strong progressive leadership is going to be needed to save America from the idiocy of trickle-down economics and cowboy capitalism.
It would have been so much easier, and we would be so much progressed, if we wouldn't have had the latest round of Conservative idiocy. If instead of Reaganomics we would have taken a road more sane. Perhaps this time enough people will learn from the mistakes so as not to repeat them yet again.
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