Not the John McCain we used to know:Conservatives are beginning to dump him like milk that's gone sour.

With the unveiling of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, there were a number of conservative journalists and commentators who expressed immediately everything from incredulity to shock to outright derision. And then there were those who gleefully whored themselves out to the cause of the GOP's latest desperation tactic, writing fawning, preposterous propaganda that pandered and condescended shamelessly to its readership. You know, par for the course when it comes to lying, fanatical GOP brown shirts...ahem..I meant brown-nosers with no shred of journalistic integrity to uphold in the first place.

With the passage of time, and particularly after the broadcast of her surreal interview with ABC's Charles Gibson -- during which she was revealed to be even more ignorant and dumb than we had feared previously* -- Sarah Palin's stock has continued to plummet, both among quote-ordinary voters-unquote and the more intellectually honestho members of the Republican pundit caste. One by one, each of these conservative journos -- the ones capable of speaking in complete sentences -- have thrown up their hands and admitted that the jig is up, this Palin thing is one pig that just won't fly. Among them:

• David Brooks, The New York Times, 9/15/08,
  
• David Cohen, The Washington Post, 9/17/08, and
  
• Through The Huffington Post, watch the ABC News This Week panel agree unanimously that, in light of his behavior since the financial crisis began, McCain's age is becoming an unavoidable problem, as are his judgment and character. Veteran ultraconservative George Will is the hardest of them all on McCain, saying, among other things: "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful," 9/21/08.
  

And now, they're joined by Republican politicians who tell the truth and recognize that it would be insanity to let that crazy woman continue to ruin our lives (I nicked that phrase from Gypsy Sun & Rainbows, [thanks, Gypsy Sun & Rainbows]), let alone sit within a heartbeat of the presidency. Among them:

• Senator Chuck Hagel, as reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/19/08.
• Congressman Wayne Gilcrest, as reported by Politico, 9/18/08.
  

[Updated 9/21/08]

____________

* And throughout which Palin came across as phony, hollow, opportunistic and dishonest. Not to mention self-centered, but we already knew that in spades.

I think that the GOP has thrown in the towel: Palin is a nightmare who appeals only to a narrow base of inbred racist mean people.

Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican Convention was (and is) an obnoxious, mean-spirited, hollow, divisive self-parody. Her voice is unbearable: it's screechy and self-congratulatory. Her opinions are repugnant and also stupid. Not to mention that she's a thinly veiled racist. "But small-town America will love her!!" some idiot on Charlie Rose says. No they won't, I respond. The only ones who will love her are the ones who already are inclined to love her. She does nothing to increase the number of votes that McCain will get, and in fact, one of the myriad ways in which she hurts McCain is that she makes him appear even more irrelevant that he already is.

Let's face it, people: the Republicans are sitting this one out. Just as when George H.W. failed to get his second turn, the GOP knows that it's not going to win this election, and so instead, it's concentrating on galvanizing the solidarity of its base. It's leaving a huge deficit that will be sure to cripple Obama's ability to push through his domestic agenda, and the Sarah Palinites will remain true to the cause, and they're have abortion, guns and "the liberal media" on their mind.

By the way: WHO ACTUALLY STILL USES THE PHRASE "THE LIBERAL MEDIA??" Answer: nobody. Not anybody who knows what they're talking about. But the GOP is playing the game it's played in one way or another since Nixon. It's going to feed on the weepy, self-centered "victimization" and "marginalization" of white, unsophisticated, lower- and lower-middle-class white people. Particularly born-again Christians. That is the only group of people in the world who think the media are "liberal" after the Iraq War. And that's because they're basically fascists: uneducated and confused about the world. And they are precisely the people for whom the low-rent spectacle of this year's Republican Convention has been staged.

They're not trying to win this thing. They're setting their sights on future elections.

Further bric-a-brac upon which I rest my thesis:

Sarah Palin has chosen to exploit her own daughter's pregnancy: and when "family values" types do this kind of thing, we have the right, my friends, to point and to laugh our little Left-liberal-blogosphere-asses off. So take that, Rudy "Looks, Sounds and Thinks Like A Dumber and Meaner Benito Mussolini" Giuliani. But beyond that, whatever bullshit sympathy accrues to the Stupid Alaskan Bitch from an understanding, partner-in-white-born-again-Christian-victimization Christian Right, it's simply not going to be durable enough to carry her and much less to carry McCain to a general election victory. I mean, could you actually picture this freak show in the White House/VP mansion? I just don't fucking think so.

Also, thanks to Gypsy Sun & Rainbows for first bringing my attention to this tasty little morsel, which I think gives us a pretty good idea of what Republicans across the country are saying behind closed doors, even as they churn out bullshit lies in their columns about how very earthy Sarah "I BURN BOOKS, WHICH IS ALSO WHAT ADOLF HITLER (A NAZI) DID" Palin is.

This really is a new low for politics in my lifetime. I mean like, for real. It's just so cynical and full of hate. And we have the Republicans to thank for wasting our time with it.