EXPLAINING PALINTOLOGY

Frank Rich has an interesting column in today's NY Times describing the increasingly strong hold that Sarah Palin has on the GOP. Worse, Rich argues, is how the Republican Party - just like Michael Jackson apologists have done - has come to justify and embrace Palin's strange logic and her recent life decisions. Here's how Rich opens his article:

SARAH PALIN and Al Sharpton don’t ordinarily have much in common, but they achieved a rare harmonic convergence at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. When Sharpton told the singer’s children it was their daddy’s adversaries, not their daddy, who were “strange,” he was channeling the pugnacious argument the Alaska governor had made the week before. There was nothing strange about her decision to quit in midterm, Palin told America. What’s strange — or “insane,” in her lingo — are the critics who dare question her erratic behavior on the national stage.

So, what makes Palin the star of the party? In a few words, her ability to tap into the Republican's sense of resentment and victimization.

The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

What makes this development so dangerous, according to Rich, is how reality flies out the door when it comes to evaluating Sarah Palin and what she supposedly represents.

The politics of resentment are impervious to facts. Palinists regard their star as an icon of working-class America even though the Palins’ combined reported income ($211,000) puts them in the top 3.6 percent of American households. They see her as a champion of conservative fiscal principles even though she said yes to the Bridge to Nowhere and presided over a state that ranks No.1 in federal pork.

There's more (the article is longer than a standard op-ed) but Rich makes it clear that the key to understanding why the Republicans have come to embrace Sarah Palin is how she puts a pretty face on the very ugly politics of resentment.

- Mark

UPDATE: I just found this from the Wall Street Journal. Peggy Noonan, former special assistant to Ronald Reagan, is horrified at the prospect of Sarah Palin leading the Republican Party. Here's a snippet of what she thinks about Sarah Palin:

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.