My Vote for Best Ever Post About Sarah Palin

Seems like I can't go anywhere in Progressive Paradise these days without running into someone who wouldn't rather listen to a simulation of 10,000 fingernails screeching across 10,000 blackboards than to hear one good word about Sarah Palin, so I was very glad to encounter William A. Jacobson's post at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: If Palin Were President Now in which he outlines why Palin couldn't do "any worse as President than Barack Obama":

If Palin were President, we would not have:

• A debt and deficit rising so far out of proportion to historical norms as to threaten the near-and-long term viability of the country's ability to service the debt without destroying the value of the dollar, and passing on to our children and grandchildren unsustainable burdens.
• A stimulus package filled with pork and giveaways to political constituencies, pushed through under false and fraudulent claims of job creation, and exaggerated claims of immediate economic disaster which themselves hurt the markets, in a process so disgusting that not a single Representative or Senator read the bill before voting.
• Health care proposals which are wolves in sheep's clothing, using a seemingly benign "public option" to drive out private insurers, to increase the percentage of people dependent on the government, and eventually to obtain the "one nation, one plan" nationalization of health care which is the holy grail of Obama and his left-wing supporters.
• A "cap-and-trade" proposal which seeks to regulate and tax the most fundamental aspects of the economy based upon the pure hubris that bureaucrats in Washington are capable of knowing what is best for individual businesses, and arising from disputed science as to the existence and causes of global warming, while proponents like Al Gore stand ready to make fortunes from "trading" carbon credits.
• A foreign policy which strong-arms allies such as Israel and Honduras, while paying deference to enemies such as Hugo Chavez and Mahmood Ahmadinejad, and which denigrates the U.S. by showing subservience to foreign rulers and by distorting the historical role of the U.S.
• An energy policy which increases our current dependence of foreign oil by locking up domestic resources, in the speculative hope that someday, somehow, alternative energy sources will make up the difference.
• The use of federal government power to bully the private sector into giving up property rights in favor of unions and other political supporters of the administration, rather than letting the rule of law work in the normal fashion in auto industry bankruptcy proceedings, as happened with other industries that restructured.
• An administration spinning out of control because of the same disease which characterizes all central planners; the false sense that central government is best suited to make decisions for individuals. And add to it the hubris of the political classes, the people who cannot fathom that anyone without the proper degrees or who isn't articulate lacks intelligence or common sense. By the time Obama figures out how to use the brakes, it will not matter.
  

That's it in a nutshell.

So why does Palin evince such intensely felt levels of fear and loathing in some people? True enough, she's not putty in anyone's hands, and that certainly is a threat to any political machine. Imagine how popular Palin would be if she were easy to "influence" by political shenanigans. If Obama makes good magazine-cover beefcake and Michelle's arms are too beautiful for sleeves, what could an airbrush do to a Time cover portrait of Sarah Palin and Todd? If Obama is nominated Father of the Year for taking his daughters for an ice cream, how hard would it be to sugar-spin Palin into Mom of the Year?

I don't buy the snooty proposition being peddled by well educated anti-Palinites that they think Palin is a stupid buffoon. Many a Ph.D. is no more than a couple of generations from beloved immigrants who graduated from the school of hard knocks and didn't articulate the g's at the ends of gerunds but who nevertheless managed to earn their descendants' respect.

A far greater threat than any combination of Palin's defects could be that be that her kind of self-direction just might be catching. She's more likely to influence than be influenced. The possibility brings to my mind a quote by Gandhi in the movie of that name: "A hundred thousand Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate." Who knows who might lose their cushy situations if a sufficient number of Americans get the idea that they can refuse to cooperate and still retain their honor? For a nation of immigrants and Sons of Liberty, it's a delectable proposition.
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Related post: Some Folks Are Wise and Some Are Otherwise