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Sarah Palin’s Anti-Intellectual Tactics Ruined Republican Party
March 14, 2012
Richard Cohen states it clearly.
The movie portrays Palin as an ignoramus. She did not know that Queen Elizabeth II does not run the British government, and she did not know that North and South Korea are different countries. She seemed not to have heard of the Federal Reserve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden” and she thought America went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein, not al-Qaeda, had attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Not only did she know little, but she was determinately incurious and supremely smug in her ignorance.
Palin is no longer an anomaly. McCain didn’t choose her for her intellectual or experiential qualities, nor because he was geographically or ideologically balancing the ticket. She was an antiabortion woman with a pulse: Enough! She, like the out-of-nowhere Obama, had the stuff of celebrity — the snap, the dazzle, the self-assurance, the sex appeal. She didn’t need to dance with a star. God told her she already was one.
So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.
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Mr. Cohen, You Wish! You cannot excuse the insane fact that the Republican party nominated a Sarah Palin for VP of the United States by suggesting that other parties would be so negligent and fool-hardy.
Although the Democratic tent is large and diverse, there is a pre-requisite for candidates that Mrs. Palin could not claim- a working intelligence that recognizes the world beyond self. Not even Al Gore’s reluctant decision to select Joe Lieberman as a running mate comes close to the reckless choice the Republican nobles made John McCain accept.