Finally, Sarah Palin!

I fell off the blogosphere for quite a while and thus have only been consuming, not contributing to, the several million words per day devoted to the Alaska governor. In the primaries I voted for Senator Clinton, a smart, articulate, savvy female. (Yes, she had baggage, which included Bill, but I was excited to vote for her.) Far from being a PUMA, though, I then became an Obama fan. When I first heard of Sarah Palin -- when McCain nominated her -- I was not, however, tempted to support her just because she has the same internal plumbing I do.

Some reasons not to support her were obvious right away:
* First, she's a Republican, which as far as I'm concerned pretty much makes her a man in drag.
* Second, she's anti-choice.
* Third, she put on, for the campaign, an exaggerated folksy accent which is entirely absent in her old broadcast footage. I can code-switch with the best of them, but when a candidate changes in this way to this extent, it says "I don't respect the American public" loud and clear.

And on further acquaintance, other reasons quickly manifested themselves:

* She's a total wingnut.

* She can read a teleprompter (which IS a skill) but cannot create sentences.

* Her campaign deliberately appealed to lowest common denominator fears.

And now -- will she go away? Will she become a broadcaster for Faux News? Will she be -- as hinted at by her product placement at the RepubGovs meeting today -- the new face of the GOP? Or will the Republicans be, rightly, embarrassed by her? 

It's a bit like watching a train wreck; I desperately want never to see or hear her again, and yet I can't immediately dial or surf away from the stories about her.  I cringe when I hear her tortured syntax, but ... schadenfreude lives.  

A more serious discussion of the same topic by Andrew Sullivan, cited on Salon, today. At least I'm not alone.