Democracy for Vancouver

The fevered dream of the GOP continues.

I was going to quote some of Sarah Palin’s odious speech, but its Dr. Laura sarcasm and patina of lies made it impossible to stomach.

The GOP has nothing but god, guns, abortion and war. There was nothing in last night’s speech - or in this entire convention - about how a McCain/Palin administration would solve the credit crisis, get people back to work, or rebuild the country’s infrastructure. Nothing about how the debt and deficit will be addressed, or how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be ended. There is only xenophobia and selfishness masquerading as patriotism, and nothing more.

I was at a dinner last night with a bunch of old-school republicans: East Coast Fortune-500 company managers. While to a person they believed that Sarah Palin was a gimmick, a gift to the Religious Right, and totally unqualified for the job, they all also believed that she would peel away enough Hillary voters to give McCain a win in November, and that there would be a 2-woman race in 2012: Palin vs. Clinton.

I hope like hell they’re wrong, but reading Sarah Palin’s speech this morning and hearing its delivery in snippets on my way home last night, I am less confident than I was yesterday morning that this woman is an utter and complete joke. She is as single-minded as John McCain, as duplicitous as Dubya and as ruthless as Karl Rove, and she will not hesitate to play either the damsel in distress or the pit bull in pumps if it will get her what she wants.

We have underestimated the credulity of the American people in the past. The better angels of our nature won’t do us much good this time around. We need to come out swinging, and use the truth as a cudgel to beat back Sarah Palin.

Or the last 8 years will have just been the world’s longest movie trailer to the most depressing disaster film of all time.