"Terminator: The Sarah Palin Chronicles" which premiered in St. Paul to overwhelming critical acclaim has now taken its show on the road. But I got bad news for Democrats. She just might be the September surprise that will win the presidential election for John McCain. Overnight, she transformed the GOP from Grumpy Old Pols to Gushing Over Palin.
A grape Kool-Aid kind of mass love psychosis affected everyone at the Republican National Convention. Delegates in funny hats, fat cats in suits, and wide-eyed Fox News pundits swooned and went gaga over the kick-ass Alaska Governor who delivered some fairly vicious and unfair body blows to Barack Obama. As Maureen Sullivan said over at Slate, "she's a pit bull with lipstick."
The former beauty queen eclipsed the questionable popularity of Old Guy McCain who joked last month that his wife should participate in a topless beauty contest. Sarah and John are a May-December political romance. But for rank-and-file Republicans, it was as if Nick Jonas and Miley Cyrus were performing a love duet for their screaming fans.
The McCain camp might even decide to reverse the order of names on their campaign signs and buttons. The word out there is: Get John in the White House so he can then hand over the reigns to his plucky running mate. As that hateful scourge Ann Coulter gushed, "Our motto: Sarah Palin is only a heartbeat away!"
It seems as if Obama must now run against Palin, and not just McCain. Maybe this bait-and-switch is all a concoction of the media since both are newly minted American Idols. But Palin made it plain and simple that she will continue to go after Obama with barracuda-like ruthlessness.
Abroad, the nation is faced with an asymmetrical war on terror. Here on native soil, we have an asymmetrical presidential election with the Democratic nominee ostensibly pitted against the Republican VP.
Palin delivered Wednesday's speech in St. Paul with the poised flair of a mid-market television news anchor, though I prefer the English term, "news presenter." She wisely kept to a narrow script as it rolled down the teleprompter screen, highlighting her humble Hockey Mom background as well as paying tribute to McCain's military record. She put the pow and wow into POW. As for talking about meaningful policy matters, that was shoved out of sight. In this regard, she was less Sarah Conner and more like the St. Pauli Girl.
While prim and proper in her librarian's get up, one expects her undergarments to be chain mail. "Miss Wasilla 1984" commandeered the crowd like Madonna at a rock concert. But the pulsing beat of sex was replaced by Caribou Barbie politics. Afterward, the GOP celebrated with a new kind of "poll" dancing.
The GOP even has a love child mascot to go with its newest It Girl: her unwed teen daughter's yet-to-be born kid So what if Bristol hooked up with a sex stud on skates, or her pro-life mom advocates abstinence as the only form of sex-ed in schools. What matters is that Bristol's having the baby. "Juno" meets Juneau with the Palins.
It takes a national convention of right-wing evangelicals to raise an out-of-wedlock child.
My god, you expected to see a video tribute to Britney's little sister and her infant. High school girls, these right-wing hypocrites are saying, it's okay to get knocked up before you get your driver's license or take the SATs, but only if you carry to term.
Whatever did or does occur in Wasilla with the Palins can't be a privacy issue because the entire clan was shamelessly paraded before tens of millions.
Tiny Wasilla reminds me of fictional "Winesburg, Ohio," which is the quintessential book of linked short stories dealing with sexual repression and its unintended consequences in small-town America. You can't take the id out of idiocy.
The convention will one day be remembered as the Republicans' Woodstock-- a perversely insular love fest that excited the hormonal passions of conservatives-- men and women-- while giving voice to irrational contempt towards Obama Democrats. What we heard in the hall was "Make War, Not Love."
The Republican party is always uncomfortable around the subject of sex. It's literally the elephant in the room. Which might explains the passionate reaction to Palin. Belittled and battered by the gay sex shenanigans of McGreevey, Foley, and Craig, the Republicans needed a Joan of Arc to rescue them from further humiliation and potential 2008 defeat at the hands of Democrats.
And like Joan, God speaks to Sarah in mysterious and private ways, giving her celestial counsel on such earthly matters as pork barrel politics, oil drilling in Alaskan wildlife refuges, earmarks, Iraq war, polar bears, abortion, teaching of creationism, and book banning. She might be a small-town gal, but she believes she has a direct pipeline to God.
She pumped testosterone into the testy McCain's campaign. But she is certainly not "twice the man as Obama," as the portly windbag Limbaugh wants his listeners to believe. Her vindictiveness, obvious smugness and provincial mindset could make her the scariest VP since, well, Dick Cheney. Even if she's a better shot. than him, this business about her supporting aerial hunting of wolves in Alaska is grossly unfair to these wonderful animals. (Aerial hunting of jihadis, not civilian, targets, however, is allowed in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Unlike varmint-chasing Mitt Romney and I-used-to-go-shooting-with-my-Dad Hillary Clinton, Palin is all lock and load, and is just the kind of trigger-happy VP you don't anywhere near the nuclear codes.
With God on her side, who knows what could happen if she becomes president and there are tense international situations, like China invading Taiwan, Russia gobbling up a few more breakaway republics on its Western border, or Pakistan going to war with India over Kashmir.
If Palin indeed represents a breath of fresh air, as the GOP insists, then it's a cold arctic blast that should alarm many Americans. Just like the incurious George W. Bush, she places an over-reliance on faith-based politics that gets its marching orders from a literal interpretation of the Bible. Must Armageddon always be around the corner for these folks? I'm sure whatever few allies America now has left in the world were hardly consoled by this Palin observation: The United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war because it was a "task that is from God."
Despite McCain's caterwauling for change and bipartisan consensus, the proposed break from eight years of Bush and his failed fear-based policies is an illusion and lie. Palin is his lethal spear point against Obama-Biden. This gal knows how to hunt. She's got game. Go after her and you get accused of sexism.
The Sarah Surge has just begun.