P is for Pandering

Holy Shit! Jesus Christ is a woman! And she showed up in all her glory on the stage at the Republican National Convention last night! Oh, wait, I have my stories wrong. Somewhere in the late eighties while Reagan was looking more and more like the doddering fool he always was (please staff, spend extra time and millions to make movies for me explaining the issues of the day, I'm just the leader of the free world and shouldn't be expected to be able to grasp issues by reading about them!), several key Republican advisors began to syphon off his charm and fight in liquid form and were systematically injecting it into a nice little beauty queen in Wasilla, Alaska. The Gipper has returned! With a vagina! All praise.

Sorry if I am being histrionic, I'm just trying to match the tone of my colleagues here in St. Paul. There is only one word to describe Governor Palin's address to her screaming acolytes last night: pandering. It appears McCain's sole purpose in bringing this unknown entity into the spotlight of a national campaign is to drag said campaign right into the gutter. Because his top aides are already saying this campaign is not actually about 'issues.' What a farce of a Democratic landslide it would be if it actually were. Because all Palin did was energize the fringe lunatics who felt slighted by a so-called independent minded Republican bearing the Party standard. And the only new element she added to the old noise was the kind of cutting cutesy humor that flies around when one too many martinis has been consumed. So, now we have a reform ticket, that consists of a man whose 'reaching across the aisles' for campaign funding reform has been part of the lead up to back to back bank breaking elections while the economy stagnates and slumps and a woman who wanted earmarks amounting to $4,030.00 per resident of US tax payer dollars for every person in Wasilla and was for the 'Bridge to Nowhere' until it became politically advantageous to be against it. And all this nonsense is just to re-ignite the two America's fight. 'I'm just your average hockey mom,' Palin says. Great and grand, now go back to being that and leave the ruling of this country to adults.

All last night proved is that this woman can read a speech. Which is quite an accomplishment on this presidential ticket, but that's beside the point. She hit all the Republican talking points that get Republicans elected and that they promptly forget until the next election cycle. The way they govern is to ceaselessly drive our country into economic and ecological ruin, roll back advancements in science and civil liberties, and wage one pyrrhic war after another.

If you actually listened to the speech (which was hard enough with the crazies vaulting out of their seats every two sentences) all you heard was noise. If you think Obama says nothing, then you should spend a few minutes with this one. Any and all salient points about governing may as well have been uttered by our current leader, the Bush man.

So, once again, it's us versus them. The elites versus the down home American values crowd (whatever those are). Serious discussion about serious issues out the window. Thanks Maverick, thanks a lot.