Meet Sarah Palin: George W. Bush In A Skirt

Well, short of visibly freezing or throwing up, Sarah Palin was expected to and did receive much fawning and acclaim for reading the teleprompter and delivering a speech that was written by Bush's speechwriter before she was even chosen by John McCain.

I've gotta hand it to her, she sure did a good job of mouthing off the words she was told to say. And she definitely burnished her reputation tonight as a culture warmonger: her mocking, condescending, patronizing tone was straight out of the ugly, opportunistic, divisive politics perfected by that one-trick pony Karl Rove. It was what John McCain wanted and what John McCain got.

Palin was good theater. All bluster, no substance. All posturing, no vision. All packaging, no gravitas.

In short, Sarah Palin was George W. Bush in a skirt.

And the predictably out of touch Republican crowd on the convention floor loved it. It was a bit sad to watch the sea of mostly white, aging faces partying like the last eight years never happened, hooting and hollering as they gobbled up the red meat from speech after speech that were designed especially for the conservative base and the base alone, to get them all psyched up in a culture war of their own making.

True to her party's tradition, Palin seeks to win office by standing over a divided electorate; in that respect, Giuliani, Huckabee and Romney were appropriate fluffers for her speech, as they huffed and puffed with relish to bring the house down. All of them the perfect picture of loyal apparatchiks oblivious to their own party's failure.

It is for this reason John McCain chose Palin, given that he has nothing else to run on. It was all about the same old polarizing identity and culture war; pitting Americans against fellow Americans. Personality over issues. It was all about them, instead of about all of us. Politics as usual, and John McCain is truly convinced we will fall for it again.

The Republican Party, to paraphrase Obama, has truly become the party of big conventions about small things.

More at Memeorandum.

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