For a bunch of guys who constantly bitched about Hollyweird, eelights and mocked a certain prez elect as a celebrity, they seem to be taken in by the shallow glamor that marks celebrities.

It's too bad that many in the base are too stupid to realize that their attacks are mostly the psychological projection of their own failings.

It's good to see the Monthly finally getting this.

It didn't start with Jr, it started with Reagan. Je was just a much better actor than Palin, he spent years in the governor's mansion preparing for the part, and faithfully memorizing his lines.

Palin is just the latest faster, cheaper, more beautiful version of this same phenomena. It's sad that it took 28 years for the pundit class to catch on.

And it probably wouldn't have happened now if the internet didn't permit punditry to interact directly with itself.

Palin and Bush both believed that their candidacies were supported by Divine Providence. Why would they need to be competent-- with the Big Guy on their side? No, really.

You gotta remember: Being The Decider ain't rocket science.

It's not really surprising if you remember a famous description of George W. Bush: the Perfect Tool. (Was it Wolfowitz who described him so?)

Clueless candidates like W and Palin rise to the top because they make useful front men for the people pulling their strings, the special interests who own them, etc. They don't know or care that they're being manipulated - as long as they have the sham of holding an office, they're happy.

They don't want competent people in office, they want electable people who can be manipulated. Lieberman failed the electability test; Palin didn't.

The question is, who was playing Cheney to Palin's Bush?

Hilzoy - Nicely said, and thank you.

Ronald Reagan said that "Government is the problem." Republicans somehow misinterpreted that to mean that they can make government a bigger and bigger problem. George W Bush fit the bill perfectly, and perfectly cynically.

On NPR earlier this year I heard a voter interviewed at an Obama rally in Ohio. The voter was asked if he felt Obama was an out-of-touch elitist. The voter replied that he felt insulted by the question. I don't have the exact words, but he pointed out that the U.S. wants elite athletes and scientists, that we have the world's most elite army. Why, he asked, wouldn't he want an elite President?

I think the U.S. is getting it, and won't be fooled again.

The whole Palin episode reminds me of the joke about the guy with three girlfriends and he truly can't decide which one to marry.

The joke goes on for a while, but in the end, he decides to marry the one with the big tits.

The GOP has become that guy in the joke, unable to think beyond the most base level (I'm not literally talking about breasts, just metaphorically). The anti-intellectual strain of the party will continue to be their undoing for years to come, or until the Democrats wear out their welcome.

I'm certainly no fan of Bush or his administration, and have criticized them consistently for years (see

http://cogito.blogs.com/meditations/2008/11/could-you-hurry-up-and-get-out-of-here.html

or

http://cogito.blogs.com/meditations/2008/11/couldnt-happen-to-a-more-deserving-guy.html

and that's just this week ;)

Still, I think you're being too hard in some respects on Bush and the Republican luminati. After a wasted youth -- here defined as the first 40 years of his life -- Bush got his act together, sobered up, and managed a string of successes. He was a decent managing partner for the Rangers (one of the consistently worst teams in baseball) and was a popular and relatively good 2-term governor of Texas (State motto: At least our politics aren't as corrupt as Alaska!)

Under the circumstances someone like Scowcroft or Colin Powell might have, reasonably if optimistically, thought it possible Bush would grow into the job. That this most assuredly didn't happen isn't their fault, it's Bush's. That he squandered the worldwide goodwill the US enjoyed after 9/11 isn't their fault, it's Bush's. That he could not handle authority -- or his own VP -- and turned into a second class despot whom history will rank with Pierce and Harding and Buchanan isn't their fault. It all falls to "The Decider" and no one else.

So in one sense you're too hard on the Bush of 2000, and in another far too easy on him since.

Since she's prayed that God give her a door to plow through regarding 2012, perhaps God will provide her a trap door in the floor.

And this great post, Hilzoy, unearths a larger truth about Republican candidates that sounds wildly conspiratorial: they are fronts for a corporate/right wing agenda. They are not important. The emptier the suit the better. They are teleprompter readers (Palin was perfect for this). Bush was not really even present for much of his presidency. Who calls the shots in a Republican administration? We should spend some time looking deeply at the last eight years--who was Cheney working with?

It's not that Sarah Palin is a celebrity, it's that she seems like a regular person to a lot of people. I have at times over the past few years seen a left-wing push back against "credentialism" as a metric for all things in life. I think Sarah Palin is a right-wing manifestation of the same thing. Her presence soothed the conservative American soul that we are still a country run by the people.

I think focusing on Palin misses the point. If you recall, she not only wasn't challenged at the convention, she was warmly embraced. The GOP rank and file LOVED her (and still do).

The problem isn't that Sarah Palin crosses some line into overt hackdom; it's that the party she represents has long since ceased to be a worthwhile part of the political debate. The Republicans nominated and supported Palin (as they did Quayle and Dubya) knowing what they had. They didn't care. These empty-suited liars aren't some anomaly, they are precisely what the modern GOP hopes to elect.

The problem isn't Palin herself (a garden variety Bircher nutcase), it's the party theocratic authoritarian fanatics that she came from. Neither the country nor the world are safe so long as this basket of weirdos are considered credible enough to be worthy of 40+ percent of the vote.

Despite being the most failed president in American history, I'm actually inclined to think George W. had slightly more qualifications to be president than Palin.

Palin's monologues do have one distinction: they're just as good as some of the monologues by Peter Sellers, particularly when he played Chance in Being There. She's a verbal train wreck and a perfect parody of Republican talking points. She therefore is fully qualified to a be a host of a right wing talk show.

As long as she stays out of the White House, she's hilarious. But if she... Oh God, that's too horrible to contemplate....

But I am confused. The Repukeliscum do not care about competence. Their basic approach lies in demonstrating incompetence, and thus making the case for more outsourcing and privatizing. That's what Bush did. He is the worst president in US history.

What's sad is that the Repubs had a number of good veep possibilities, including competent women -- Pawlenty, Ridge, Crist maybe, Snowe, Dole, Steele, heck even Brownback if they really wanted to play to the wingnuts -- people with a few minuses but a lot of pluses. Even a losing effort, as this was likely to be given how things were shaping up, would have given the veep candidate national exposure and thus some standing in the party. Now with Palin becoming more and more a joke, the GOP has no untainted public face, no one who can step up and take the lead. Can anyone in the party think ahead?

I also think it's wrong to equate Palin and Bush (though I sometimes called Palin "Bush without the substance"). As noted above, Bush has some native smarts, he had connections galore, and for gawd's sake he grew up in a political family so he at least had some idea what went into the job even before his father was president.

I'm not saying he should have been president, but it wasn't clear in 2000 that he'd be any worse than, say, Coolidge. "Probably not as bad as Nixon" was at least acceptable at the time. We were so innocent back then.

Fred Flintstone?
No, thankfully, Jim Webb saved us from that one.

Cut the crap, libs. Nancy Pelosi is right in line for the presidency, and she is a typical bubble-headed italian mama who knows little besides changing diapers and has an IQ of about 15.

The lib media piled on Palin because she looked like such a plus for the McCain campaign that she represented a threat for the Obmessiah. Enough is enough. McCain lost. Nancy Pelosi is the remaining threat a heartbeat away.

Whether they kept silent because they thought Bush could win and winning was all that mattered to them, or because (in some cases) of their friendship with Bush's father, or for some other reason, they did not put the interests of the country first.

I forget the particulars, but there was someone in the Bush circle who did come forth and was stepped on as a result.

"...and winning was all that mattered to them, or because (in some cases) of their friendship with Bush's father, or for some other reason, they did not put the interests of the country first...."

That is what it's come down to. It is easier for the wealthy to profiteer, pay less taxes. and have less regulation of their greedy affairs with republicans in office. They really have no ideology that is not complete hypocrisy in reality. Winning, by any means necessary, is all that matters to them. That is why they so easily accept cheating, purging voter rolls, politicizing justice...anything so long as they win. They have wrecked America with their yahoo cowboy cadillac authoritarian self interest. Country is not "to be served" it is to serve them. "Country First" is their mask of hypocrisy. Nothing they've done has helped America without a big greedy payoff for them.

Good post Hilzoy. Especially your shock and frustrating disbelieve at how poisonous these republicans have been to our nation. If they ever had any merit, they have nothing now but pretense, and that allows them to ignore failure and ignorance... to the point of being nonsensical...as in the Palin spew you posted. A bunch of goobers...goobering.

"Someone should have said: no, this is just unacceptable, and if you nominate her, I will say so publicly, and oppose her nomination on the convention floor. Apparently, people said this about Lieberman. But no one said it about Sarah Palin. And that's just astonishingly irresponsible."

"Astonishingly irresponsible" is an excellent description for the Republican elites of the last 16 years.

Palin goes to the heart of conservative unfitness for national leadership since Reagan. Conservatives should always be a minority party because theirs is largely a protest movement against the modern state and all that it entails. Reagan himself was not a full throated conservative, and when he said that government is the problem not the solution he meant it was too big and too expensive. Genuine conservatives do not believe in the modern state at all, which is why they do not care someone like Palin lacks credentials, since how can there be job requirements for a job conservatives don't believe in. Palin was quite explicit about what her base intended. They hoped that, through her, small town American provincialism would conquer the big city national state, and to do that the government had to be destroyed. Palin and her supporters never had a competing vision for how to govern America. They were simply expressions of cultural resentments with no purpose at all.

Thanks, Hilzoy, for pointing out the essential truth about Bush: he had "neither the character, temperament nor the basic competence to be president". People would tell me that he seemed like a good guy. I heard the same arguments this year about Palin.

I don't want a president who could share my carpool duties; I want someone who is smarter, more capable and more interested in public policy and how to make it better than anyone else. Yes, there are still the Bachmanns and Inhofes of the world who win elections, but we did elect many of the better angels of our nature this year. There is hope...

If somebody has not done so already: Tell TLM that:

1. Bush's ownership team of the Rangers used eminent domain to develop the area when they had enough money to do it themselves;
2. The office of governor in Texas is very weak and offered a preview of what he would do in the White House (bogus environmental and education achievements).

The details in these developments were kept under the rug though the basic facts were there for those willing to look beyond TV news coverage.

Sarah Palin turned the tip of the iceberg theory upside down. We got to see the 7/8ths of her that normally would have been submerged. If only we had the benefit of that tipping back in 2000. By the way, I think George W's mother may have made an effort to derail his bid. But George W was then a little bit of a bully (with Karl Rove as his pit bull).

Palin's pick shows how the vice-Presidential selection process is broken. Party conventions are made-for-television events at which the delegates are extras. Their toughest job is holding up the right sign at the right moment. The VP pick is left entirely to the candidate. There is no institutional opportunity for any pushback against a bone-headed pick by a candidate. In fact, a desperate candidate anxious to win a few news cycles might well keep the candidate pick a surprise even from other party leaders, as McCain did, springing the VP pick on the party at the last minute.

Given the way that we pick VP candidates, it was inevitable that some Presidential candidate would completely mishandle the selection process sooner or later.

Does anyone know who are the people pulling the strings in the Republican party? Given the strict obedience and fealty conservatives pay to their perceived leaders, often completely irrationally and lacking in conscience, it sure seems like there is some shadow system out there.

It reminds me of the book, "The Librarian" by Larry Beinhart. I'm also reminded of John Dean's quote from his last book:

"Just tell your readers that you have a source who knows a lot about the Republican party from long experience, that he knows all the key movers and shakers, and he has a bit of advice: People should not vote for any Republican, because they're dangerous, dishonest and self-serving. While I once believed that Governor George Wallace had it right, that there was not a dime's worth of difference in the parties; that is not longer true. I have come to realize the Democrats really do care about people who most need help from government; Republicans care most about those who will only get richer because of government help. The government is truly broken, particularly in dealing with national security, and another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable."

Sarah Palin: Dadaist.

The entire conservative movement has been an intentional sham. Goldwater was not some early visionary; he was an "out" nutjob. Many of his fellow Republicans felt that way at the time. Their tune only changed when they saw that Reagan could ride the wave of disenchantment with mainstream Dems using Goldwater's brand of nuttiness.

It was the success of their disregard for competence (and results) that fed the loop: pretending that killing babies (or flag-burning, or school prayer, or "law and order," or acid, or whatever) worked, so they kept at it.

All along, the power to end this nonsense was in the hands of the voters. Just like in "The Emperor's Clothes." It's easy to blame the Republicans, but much of what they did was out in the open for the voters to see, who chose to indulge their juvenile fantasies at the expense of their children's future.

McCain and his brain trust thought so little of the importance of their VP selection AND the office of the Vice President that they came up with the "My Fair Lady" concept in selecting Palin. Imagine McCain as 'enry 'iggins and Sarah as Eliza Doolittle. How about a revival of the musical renamed "My Fey Lady"? Or "Pygmalion With Lipstick"? Take a look at the song list at Wikipedia. Some of the titles could be easily modified to fit what actually happened. How about some contributions of revised song titles?

Clarence Thomas

I can't stand palin. I think she has no business in politics period, let alone a VP candidate, but there is so much in posts such as this contributing to the on-going palin bashing that is wrong:

1) clearly there is misogyny in the on-going palin hand wringing: so many men not only running, but that have been elected and served were clearly highly, highly unqualified for national public office: bush the lessor, quayle, reagan, to name just a few, that were chosen for reasons other than policy qualifications or intellectual abilities. And how about all the criminal politicians - were they qualified, should they have been put in a position to commit their crimes? Was karl rove qualified to be a taxpayer funded policy adviser to the president in the White House scheming and undermining Americans civil rights and outing CIA agents? Give it a break already. Palin was unqualified, is a dangerous right wing extremist religious fundamentalist whack job that didn't get elected. Save it for 2011 when she makes her return.

2) democracy demands that any imp can run for office to be judged by the governed, not useless pundits and image shapers.

3) I would dispute anyone that would say democrats and progressive would be singing an entirely different tune if an inexperienced, but dynamic person hailing progressive/liberal positions weren't running for office.

The appalling thing to me -- at least before the majority of voters rejected McCain/Palin -- was that when I talked with many Republicans (in Nevada) about Palin's obvious lack of knowledge and experience, they often thought it was a positive, not a negative. They thought that she would "shake Washington politics up," and change the way things are done in the nation's capital.

Luther has demonstrated his sterling qualifications to run for office in today's GOP. You need to get simple, basic facts wrong ("Nancy Pelosi is the remaining threat a heartbeat away."—last I heard, the VP was the heartbeat away); you need to engage in ethnic or racial slurs ("typical bubble-headed italian mama"); and most importantly, you need to be completely delusional in your interpretation of public events ("The lib media piled on Palin because she looked like such a plus for the McCain campaign.")

Am I the only red-blooded heterosexual American male who doesn't find Sarah Palin the slightest bit attractive?

I think it was the Anchoage Daily News that called her "Orwellian"....which I think describes the entire McCain strategy......I think he (McCain) is addicted to former beauty queens, and he needed a big fix......

BTW, wvmcl, what might set you apart from the "red-blooded heterosexual American male" is just maturity....the mature male needs more than just looks.....Granted, on a basic visual level, Palin is "attractive", but, Beauty, in her case, is only skin deep...

Am I the only red-blooded heterosexual American male who doesn't find Sarah Palin the slightest bit attractive?

Some guys will vote for anything that exhibits cleavage. Or at least hints that they may. If she can also win "Miss Cow Patty", she's in like Flint. Complete the fantasy where she may greet you at the door dripping wet and wrapped in a towel and you've got:

Governor Gone Wild!

Those large crowds showing up for Palin Rallies, er mccain, er no, Palin Rallies, only saw one thing - In their collective eyes, they saw the collapse of Roe v. Wade.

All of that "terrorist", Ayers and socialism talk was icing. They are a one issue group and she has become their St Joan of Arc leading the charge.

I think Flintstone's got it all sewn up.

I haven't yet seen a coherent sentence come out of her mouth. They are complete gobbledegook. After hearing her speak, you're head is left spinning. McCain could not have had even one conversation with her if he made her his running mate.

That quote up at the top looks like a chunk of prose by William S. Burroughs. I swear you could paste that into Naked Lunch and nobody would notice.

Don't know why you find Palin's nomination a mystery. Just look at the Republican platform. A slapped together hobgobblin of disjointed planks (e.g. pro-life and anti-welfare?) whose sole purpose is to garner a majority. Winning is all, not policy, just winning.

@ bluestatedon
Your interpretation of trolling Luther is right on. Congrats!

@ pluege
I disagree with your conclusion that Palin bashing is a sexist exercise. If blogs were around when Quayle ran as VP, he'd be getting the same treatment that Palin is now. It's not about gender, it's about Republican chutzpah.
As far as liberals being happy to "pull a McCain", I'll gladly argue with you there. Actually, Republicans already argued that one(Obama is energetic, but unqualified).....and lost. I for one need substance, not a figurehead.

Look, she is a complete ditz, but I understand exactly what she is driving at.

Articulate?

Not at all?

But don't read it and say you can't figure it out.

She it touting executive experience over legislative experience.

Not well, and she babbles away, but the point is there.

Pretending it isn't there is just silly.

Who knows who they'll try to foist off on us next time: Joe the Plumber? The latest winner of American Idol? Fred FlintstoneThompson?

Fixed it for you.

But let me say just a quick word in weak defense of the pre-Clinton-impeachment Republican party, particularly Reagan. Reagan was caricatured as an "amiable dunce," and certainly gave reason for the caricature, but it wasn't accurate. We have evidence in his own handwriting that he at least thought seriously about the issues of the day, and grappled with the best way to handle them for the good of the country. He was wrong, but he wasn't stupid. Likewise Newt Gingrich. You can call him a lot of things, and I have, most certainly, but he's not a stupid man. Once upon a time, the Republican Party at least made some effort to think.

That all changed when they couldn't get any traction against Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton singlehandedly turned the Republican party into a cargo cult. This backwoods Bubba (never mind that he was a Rhodes Scholar) was just politicking rings around them, and they couldn't figure it out. So after the disaster midterms of 1998, they decided to imitate what they thought they saw. The Democrats have a Bubba? We'll get our own Bubba, and go one better -- this one (Tom DeLay) will be a REAL idiot with a "common-man" profession. We'll see your Presidential Bubba, and raise you -- we'll have both a Speaker of the House Bubba and a Presidential Candidate Bubba. And better yet, our Bubba will reach back to Ronald Reagan, and we'll have a Bubba with tax cuts! Can't lose!

For a while it worked, because voters are a little slow to figure out that they're being conned, and also because up till this cycle, the Republicans weren't quite so honest about "Look! We're idiots! Vote for us!" But you can't run a cargo cult forever. Eventually the planes stop coming.

You are missing a huge point.

I know Joe Lieberman. He is a Democrat. He is pro choice, etc. Therefore, I will not accept his nomination and I will go public.

I don't know much at all about Palin. It seems like a big gamble but I assume you have vetted her and she is a very popular governor. So I will not object to her.

Then, I find out about Palin and I am shocked. No vetting by McCain. No interest in any serious subject by Palin.

However, now my choice is do I oppose her and force McCain to pick someone else knowing that McCain will lose the election if he admits his mistake. Therefore, I decide to remain quiet because speaking out will cause McCain the election.

Isn't there a big difference between knowing you object BEFORE the fact and finding out that you didn't have enough information to object before the fact?

What does Palin energize? The base they say? How?

I say rather she energizes the DE-BASE in all of us.

Her transparent blatant indifference and lack of curiosity was/is not only considered passable, but it appears this is actually construed as somehow attractive --and that is what is so appalling to me.

And that she is ambitious? A Pit-Bull with lipstick who has the gloves off and the heels on?
Great model for all our young women--yes, this is apparently the new pseudo feminism called pretty but damn mean --the adult female bully, determined to do whatever it takes. (Other than play by the rules, other than use decency, other than inform yourself of policy, other than practice even the slightest modicum of humility and deference).

Throughout, she is called
"Good at Connecting"
with a
'special ability to energize the base',

Connecting with what? Energizing what?
=================================================
Oh, but wait--she voted didn't she? That's one point over Olbermann.

wvmcl: I know almost no guy who finds Palin attractive. But she is the perfect freeper/little green football/Republican-wanker fantasy: the naughty librarian who reminds them a little of their mom, whom they still live with. Even their sexual fantasies are boring.

The Republican smoky roomers didn't just politely decline to speak out on Bush's deeply flawed character, drunken fratboy temperament and fundamental, core incompetence. They actively promoted him precisely because of these faults. They regarded Bush's fundamental unsuitability as a feature, not a bug.

Disentangling Sarah Palin

In the old Foundation and Empire books by Isaac Asimov a character dissected all of the words of a politician and concluded that the politician said nothing.

I have disentangled Sarah Palin's quote from above and distilled it down to its essence. Here is the original quote followed by the distillation

"Sitting here in these chairs that I'm going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it's our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don't get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we're dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations."

Sitting here in these chairs, I'm proposing working with these governors to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states It's our privileged obligation to be held accountable every day. Not just casting votes or voting present, we don't get away with that. We have to balance multibillion dollar budgets and we have tens of thousands of employees in our organizations.

As you can see, once you get rid of a few irrelevant words and untangle the clauses, she still does not say much of import.

There are entirely too many Americans, perhaps mostly of the Republican persuasion, who believe that "a little common sense" is all one needs to be a success at anything. They are dismayed at some of the decisions and statements made by elite politicians (elitism determined by amount of education usually) since it often goes against what "common sense" proclaims as correct. After all, anyone can see what the correct path should be. Therefore, it's no great leap to think that such heroes as Rudy and Arnold are almost worshipped. There is no attempt to look beneath the facades regardless of how flimsy. I despair when I think of how easily the public is led around. Thinking is just too great a task.

She was trying (in her own babbling 'palinspeak')to work in a dig at Pres. Elect Obama (oh God, it feels sooo good to type the previous words) for being in the Senate & voting 'present' & talking & stuff, etc.

She is a vile little bitch (IMO).

She can't talk. If you can't sort out your language, you can't sort out your thoughts.

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a Lieberman fan, but the idea that there is some standard for Vice Presidential nominees that Sarah Palin meets but Lieberman does not, and that enough people accept that standard that Lieberman could not be nominated but Palin could, is frightening.

She's anti-choice on abortion; Lieberman isn't. It's that simple.

Am I the only red-blooded heterosexual American male who doesn't find Sarah Palin the slightest bit attractive?

No.

Does no one remember all the reporting that Molly Ivins did on W? Hell, she knew him in high school. She warned all of us about him and still he was elected, twice. What does that say about the rest of us that voted twice for the moron (actually that for me is a tame descritption of that man)?

Please stop talking about "the Palin", just make her go away. I'm so sick of listening to her lies. She's a psychopath. She's so stupid that she can't even remember which lie she told to which reporter. Everytime you see her on TV she's got a different version of what happened. JUST MAKE HER GO AWAY!

By crossing my eyes and keeping them slightly out of focus, I was able to make perfect sense of Palin's statement. "Governors have to deal with problems that Senators don't."

I'm considering registering as Republican for the sole purpose of getting Palin nominated to lead the ticket in 2012.

Just to keep those great quotes coming....

A quick search found no mention of Max, Blumenthal, or Dominionism. What's with you people? Is that is meant, when it's said that the Left has no freakin' clue about the importance of religion in the lives of most people?

It's the mythology, silly! Are we forgetting our Joseph Campbell?

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003772

Is Sarah Palin a “whack job�? Yesterday, Politico quoted an unnamed senior McCain advisor describing Palin in just those words. Yet there has been little reporting in the mainstream media that would sustain this characterization. As I reported a few days back for The Daily Beast,, one of the things that led Bill Kristol—Palin’s principal advocate—to push her as McCain’s vice president was the fact that she was unknown, a blank slate.

A handful of serious exposé pieces emerged in the process. But only one visitor up north came back with a bag of gold nuggets. His name is Max Blumenthal.

Over the past several years, Blumenthal’s work has focused on fringe groups on the right. He has excelled in covering political activism among evangelicals. His technique is simple: he confronts the subjects and lets them speak for themselves.

The materials Blumenthal harvested on his trip have had a real impact on the campaign.

What these clips reveal is material to understanding Palin’s political and religious views. They suggest that the Wasilla congregation and Palin follow “dominionism,� a conviction that society must be governed exclusively by the law of God as set forth in the Bible. Biblical texts are to be construed and applied with a right-wing twist that reveals plenty of conservative social prejudices and little sensitivity to the original texts themselves. Moreover, dominionists share a millennial vision of the Rapture, coming great upheavals and political change leading to the creation of the Kingdom of God on earth. Dominionists do not embrace the separation of church and state, and tend to approach political issues from a highly dogmatic stance, often focused on particular charismatic individuals they see as ordained to govern. Indeed, dominionists widely embraced George W. Bush as an “anointed� leader whose decisions were beyond debate. They form a large chunk of the 20 percent rump group that continue to give Bush a positive performance evaluation. Blumenthal interviews one of Palin’s followers who equates her with Queen Esther, the biblical figure who bravely protected the Jews during the Babylonian Captivity.

Were it not for the determination and fearlessness of Max Blumenthal, we would now stand one week before the election largely ignorant of Palin’s Christianist political theology. His work was invaluable, but it has been under-exposed and -appreciated. Here is an essential library of Blumenthal’s work on Palin. Is Sarah Palin a “whack job�? Watch the clips, particularly those of her speaking in her own church, and call it for yourself.

{Horton's article includes links to 6 of Blumenthal's clips that changed the campaign.)