GOP Jujitsu

One of the best things to come out of John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate has been the opportunity to marvel at the lengths to which GOP talking heads, loyalists, and operatives have been willing to go in order to argue that Palin is up to the job. It's improv comedy at its very finest. Take this amazing routine by Frank Gaffney for example:

As that state's governor, Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis – if nothing else – about the necessity for U.S. anti-missile systems than either Messrs. Obama or Biden. In fact, the Democrats have reflexively opposed such defenses and promise to starve them of funds if elected. Opinion polls suggest that the support missile defense enjoys among Gov. Palin's Alaskans is shared by strong majorities of their countrymen elsewhere. Her judgment versus Sen. Biden's on the question of whether America should be protected against present and growing missile-delivered threats will be one of the highlights of the vice presidential nominees' debate.

It's been a while since my college days, but I don't remember reading anything about the Osmosis Doctrine in my foreign affairs class.

The really, really, really funny part about all of this is that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the Palin clan's comedic potential. Currently, Sarah is hidden away in Dick Cheney's secret bunker learning the ins and outs of non-Alaskan politics. The McCain campaign says she will be made available to the press "sometime after the convention". Yesterday we learned that John McCain sent his vetting team to Alaska after Palin was announced as his VP pick. Today we learned that Todd Palin literally hates America. He has to face the music sometime after the convention as well. This afternoon (after the America-hating stuff) we found out that Sarah slashed funding for teen moms during her time as Alaska governor. I wonder what self-proclaimed "f-ing redneck" and baby daddy Levi Johnson thinks about that.

Switching gears, I caught a fair amount of last night's GOP convention. While it clearly didn't exhibit the belly-laugh potential of the Wasilla Hillbillies, it did veer wildly into self parody with each and every single man, woman, and child in attendance cheering to the high heavens against things like the Washington status quo, George Bush, the consequences of conservative law-making, and...well, Republicans. I have no idea what their domestic platform is but I do know that John McCain was shot down in Vietnam a long time ago, Fred Thompson has something wrong with his voice, and Joe Lieberman is a lying non-Democrat.

Finally, as long time readers of this blog (and Minvolved) know, I'm a big fan of conservative talk radio. One of the best calls I have ever heard on the right side of the dial was from a young liberal on the Michael Medved show. Medved bills his show as the "number one show on politics and pop culture". I can't remember what set the caller off, but he clearly didn't think much of Medved and he exposed the show for what it is (thinly veiled Republican radio) with a single question: What is the number two show on politics and pop culture? He got a pause, a chuckle, and...well, there was no good answer to that question because even Mr. Medved was, and is, smart enough to know that his bullshit only goes so far.

John McCain, Cindy McCain, the Wasilla Hillbillies, Joe Liberman, etc need to answer a single question: Who puts their country second? If that's what they want to make this election about, then they need to answer that question with specifics. I'll save you the time...there is no answer.

Actually, that's not completely true. I heard that Todd Palin put his country second a while back.