Andrew Sullivan Should Learn To Quit When He Is Ahead.

29 Sep 2009 01:20 pm

The Palin Party

Politico surveys the GOP base and finds Palin-mania still strong. I think she perfectly represents a form of protest cultural politics that has no interest in actually governing. And what's fascinating about the various quotes from local GOP machers is that none of them refers in any way to policy. She is not supported because of what she allegedly believes, or what she says she'll do. She is supported because she shares an identity, real or imagined, with white, angry alienated conservatives. She is identity politics personified. And so the loony right's transformation into a mirror image of the loony left of the 1980s accelerates.

Can't let well enough alone, can he? Was he even in these United Snakes in the 1980s? And what was this "loony left of the 1980s?" "Loony" simply because it opposed Sullivan's political man-crush, Ronald Reagan? Were Iran-Contra, Central & South American death-squads (Catholic anti-commies killing commie Catholic nuns: Tough call for Andy?) the October Surprise, & so on lunatic inventions?

Sullivan scrambled off the Bush branch as it broke away beneath him, but he clings to the rotting trunk of right-wing belief as if his life depended on it. When confronted w/ the grim reality ("Before his nose.") of Bush's & Cheney's idiocy & ineptitude he couldn't deny it, but we can't expect a reëxamination of the wondrous age of Ronnie from him, or many others; it's so much easier to let it slip into the misty golden blur of legend becoming myth. Politically expedient, too.

On the most cynical level, the "loony left" could even be a stab at Malkin-style objectivity: "Waaaah! Libs do it too! Don't forget!"