If the GOP leadership is smart, it won't even try to "stop Sarah Palin". Unfortunately, the GOP leadership is not smart.
The greatest fear of the GOP leadership is not that Sarah Palin will get the nomination and lose the election...but that she'll get the nomination and win the election. That is why she must be stopped--not because she'll cost the GOP the White House in 2012, but because the wrong kind of Republican will win the election. It will mean bad things for the country club Republicans, the same way Reagan did in the 1980s.
Sarah Palin is the darling of the TEA partiers because she's like them. She's not a coastal elite. She doesn't come from the Ivy League; she's not a member of the political class. She advocates positions which are far to the right of the Ruling Class.
The GOP elites think--erroneously--that Republicans like Sarah Palin can't win national elections. Reagan? Reagan was a fluke; and thank God there isn't another politician like him wandering around D.C. these days. Could you imagine what that would be like, if we actually had to pretend to like Sarah Palin?
...which is why they lose elections. The GOP cannot get this through its tiny, thick, pointy skull: if people want to vote for Democrat positions, they'll vote for Democrats. There is no point to having a party of "not quite as liberal as the Democrats". Being conservative only by degree is useless.
I won't vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. I probably won't vote for Huckabee, either. The GOP needs to find real conservatives and it needs to find them fast, and the GOP leadership needs to get out of the way of the will of the rank and file.
'Cause otherwise, the rank and file will find another party it likes better.
* * *
Whatever you do, you'd better not keep illegal aliens from casting illegal votes! The Obama Justice Department is dispatching poll watchers to Arizona in order to make sure Arizona lets illegals cast illegal votes.
You know why! Because that kind of thing helps Democrats. If it hurt Democrats, O Lord! you'd need to provide six forms of ID and a DNA sample to prove you were a citizen.
* * *
Michelle Malkin tells PBS to buzz off. Good for her.
* * *
The pictures accompanying this piece are utterly fucking useless. The story is about a Dodge truck, customized for SEMA, with dual wheels front and rear.
Main picture: an extreme close-up shot of the divide between two tires.
Second picture: a close-up of the front wheels.
Third picture: a close-up of the rear wheels.
Fourth picture: a 3/4 shot of the whole truck...from the back.
Jalopnik is part of the Gawker group of liberal asshat sites, and it has a penchant for including photographs which are utterly fucking useless. "Oh, I am such a great photographer! I don't take pictures; I make ART! Swoon over my excellent composition!"
Pic #1: I don't need an extreme close-up to know what a dual wheel setup is.
Pic #2: I understood from the text that the thing has dual wheels at both ends. Again, I know what a dual wheel setup is and what it looks like.
Pic #4: ...I have seen dual wheels on the back of a truck before. I have never seen dual wheels on the front of a truck. Perhaps you should have taken a 3/4 view of the truck from the front so the reader could see some detail in the UNIQUE part of the truck.
The pictures at that site--unless they are taken by someone not related to it--are always like that. I don't know why I bother to click through to look at the photographs any more, because this is always what happens: I go to see more details and come away disappointed and disgusted.
This isn't a site put up by an amateur car nut; these people are paid to do it and the entire suite of liberal asshattery garners its income from ads and stuff. They could and should do better than this.
* * *
One of the big favorite memes of Democrat politicians in the Chicago area, this year, has been to label their opponents as "politicians" and to emphasize it, trying to make a perjorative of the word--as if it weren't already.
So you hear their ads say something like, "Politician So-and-so wants to [do x and y]!" And my response to this has been to say, "WTF, you're not a politician, when you're running for elected office?"
I mean, that's kind of the definition of "politician", you know?
Of course I'm not the kind of person these ads are aimed at. For one thing, I have a brain. For another, I know what all the words mean.
* * *
Stupid shoulder is still hurting. I'm going to have to do a hot soak to loosen it, I think. Good thing we've got epsom salts; but it means keeping the cat out of the bathroom.
Luna will get into the tub as it's draining, and wade around in the water. No, I don't know why. What I do know is that I don't want her licking even a weak solution of magnesium sulfate off her fur, because I don't know how much of that stuff will act as a laxative for a cat.
(WTF, first I wrote "sulfur permanganate" but I knew that wasn't correct. Stupid memory.)
So while I'm trying to soak, the cat will probably be sitting outside the bathroom door and crying because she wants in. Argh etc.
* * *
Now that Halloween has been dispensed with, the holiday season can begin. *sigh*
...Thanksgiving isn't for three weeks, yet here we are starting with the Christmas ads.
If the Republicans run away with Congress, expect the economic news to be grim. There will be no good economic news coming from this shopping season regardless of who controls Congress, but a GOP majority win in Congress means the bad news gets spun bad even though the GOP won't take control of anything before January 1, 2011.
* * *
In fact, I don't expect a GOP-run Congress to fix anything.
When I say that, I'm not talking about Obama's failed risky schemes, although that's a factor; I'm talking about the real and serious structural flaws in our government's economic policy, going back at least to 2000 and possibly before.
So the economy is going to continue to suck. Even if the GOP manages to pass some kind of tax relief and budget sanity--I won't hold my breath--Obama will veto it before the ink has dried.
There will be no repeal of ObamaCare. Obama will veto any bill which tries; and the Democrats won't help override that veto. They want it to stay. It costs them nothing, politically, to leave it on the books; any failings of ObamaCare will be lain at the feet of the Republicans, and they will even be able to demagogue about how they'd like to repeal it but "though the Republicans said they would repeal it, we've had no action...." And once they seize power again it'll be ready and waiting for them.
The overt hostility of the press to the GOP and its positions will wear down their ability to promote them to the general public. The press will be especially hostile to the "TEA party" politicians and their positions.
Finally, the GOP leadership itself is hostile to the kind of change that the conservative wing of the party wants to see. The GOP leadership isn't interested in rolling back anything and it intends to do what it can to force the newly-elected to toe the line and not talk back.
I have hopes that I won't have to look for a new political party in 2012 but I'm not terribly optimistic.