Prayer and Strong Drink

The lunacy is just beginning. Strap yourself in and be prepared for a very rough ride, with thunderstorms and heavy turbulence from takeoff till landing. Pray, if you’re so inclined; drink heavily if you’re not.

Sarah Palin is crazy, fucking-certifiable-rubber room-straitjacket crazy. A recent CBS News poll found that 48% of respondents view Palin negatively. Among people in the sample group who identify themselves as political Independents, 44% took a dim view of the former Alaska governor.

Palin’s boy, Joe Miller, lost to a write-in candidate in the Alaska senate race.

Let’s recap: Palin has huge negatives and her personal support failed to put Joe Miller over the top on her own turf, but this doesn’t stop her from appearing on Good Morning America and insisting, without a hint of self-doubt, that she can beat President Obama in 2012.

Granted, Barack Obama is not the transformational politician many people thought he might be and many of his core supporters are deeply disappointed. Many expected Obama to challenge the status quo, but the man turned out to be the status quo’s staunchest defender, a fact that cost him and his party on November 2. Timidity and caution – on jobs, financial regulation, health care reform, state sanction of torture, and the never-ending wars – far more than the Tea Party, is what doomed the president in the mid-term elections. Stand for nothing, give ground on everything, and you will go down.

Thus far, signs that Obama learned his lesson from the mid-terms are not very encouraging. The president’s ball sack is still shrunken and his spine is as flexible as Gumby’s.

All things considered, however, it’s unlikely that American voters – dense and juvenile as they may be -- will abandon all reason and elect Sarah Palin president. Unlikely, yes; impossible, no. Weird shit is happening in American politics – check Michele Bachmann out if you doubt this – because the bar is set so low that a self-proclaimed witch could easily slither under it, and because the national economy is liable to remain in the doldrums until 2012.

So weird and perverse is the political zeitgeist that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan hardly merited mention in the mid-term elections. No mystery as to why: both parties are totally complicit in these cock-ups and there was no advantage to gain by reminding voters of how much money and blood, for so little gain, has been poured into Iraq and Afghanistan. At a time when Americans are hurting for jobs and America is in dire need of rejuvenating social investment across the board, we’re dumping millions of our tax dollars into two countries where the population despises our presence. What’s astonishing is how little Americans seem to care. Obama’s 2011 troop drawdown in Afghanistan is in the process of being pushed back to 2014, solely because the US cannot stabilize the country in the next seven months. Hamid Karzai knows it. Mullah Omar knows it. David Petraeus knows it.

By 2014, the US will have been in Afghanistan for thirteen years and we will be no closer to victory then than we are today.

But swing back to Sarah Palin, the crazy lady who would be queen. If she does capture the GOP nomination, she’ll campaign on tried and true conservative tropes like tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts, along with mushy ideas like “freedom” and “free markets.” God will play a front and center role in Palin’s game plan, as will “personal responsibility” and “small government.” Palin will talk incessantly about the common sense of ordinary folks and the moral turpitude of Democrats and liberals and queers and university eggheads. Faith will be a constant theme.

Thinking Americans will be appalled and mortified that someone so ill-suited for any national office might actually fool enough people to win.

Here’s a thought that chills me to the bone: Palin is so ignorant that she makes W look smart.

Say another Hail Mary or pour another shot of whisky. Hold on. Here we go.