| Poor Sarah Palin. She doesn't know it yet, but she was just chosen to be the punchline in the Republicans' latest Friday Comedy Dump.
Or maybe she did know and just didn't care.
Maybe it should have occurred to her earlier, as Capt. John McCain weighed his forlorn choices for first mate of the RMS (Republicans' Massive Shitpile) Titanic, that serving as "first mate" under Capt. John McCain was an ill-advised career choice.
Poor Sarah Palin, doomed to be John McCain's Harriet Miers. By my watch, she's, let's see . . . fourteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds from political oblivion, scheduled for a guest spot on "What's My Line?" in 2015.
And maybe that same thought crossed her mind, too, but she was just too polite, or too hesitant, or too ambitious, or simply too slow, to get out while she could. Maybe, as one by one the more astute potential victims of the McCain veepstakes found other pressing matters to attend to, like washing the dog or sorting coupons or dusting under the couch, maybe poor Sarah Palin, realizing she was all by her little ol' lonesome in the Oh-My-God-I'm-Going-To-Be-One-Half-Of-The-Worst-Presidential-Ticket-In-History green room, looked around, her limpid brown beauty queen's eyes growing big as saucers, and squeaked, almost silently, "Are you sure - ? I thought maybe we were just kidding . . . " And when the Republican chieftains nodded solemnly and pityingly and said, "Yes, Sarah, it's you," poor Sarah swooned, but the Chief Republican caught her before she could hit the ground and blemish that otherwise perfect Miss Alaska 1984 runner-up-plus-a-quarter-century face. And then the Chief Republican - still strong and virile 40 years after spending five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp - did I mention he spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp? - carried her limp body solemnly up that long, long flight of stone-hewn steps leading to the altar of November 4, and her awful fate.
(I suppose now the Republicans will have to construct a stage set at the Xcel Energy Center reminiscent of the pyramid at Tenochtitlan. No Greek togas for them, nossir - just pure American. Well, Central American. Okay - pre-American, sheesh.)
Poor Sarah Palin, destined to become a punchline, like Dan Quayle. Only I'm quiet shoor this time they vetted her bedder - not only the Miss Alaska pajunt in 1984, but, one hopes, the Wasilla Spelling Bee of 1974 . . .
.
The Republicans tried to make it rain, but it didn't. They tried to make Barack Obama look silly but they couldn't. Their only hope was a conjuring trick that used the Law of Averages to make John McCain suddenly 14 years younger - but poor Sarah Palin: the Law of Averages cannot be ignored, even by Republicans, and thus with one press conference she suddenly aged 14 years and became one-half Old Scary White Guy.
The Republicans couldn't make it rain in Denver, so maybe they figured that they could drop on the Democrats a Flood of voters the likes of which have never been seen in the 6,000-year history of the world, by sacrificing a former Virgin. By picking someone who is ready on Day One thousand, four hundred sixty. By picking someone who on her best day received fewer votes than Maria Rivas Hamar received in her third-place finish in the 2006 race for judge of L.A. County's Superior Court, seat no. 144.
The Republicans figured they had created an upside-down reverse mirror image of of the Democratic ticket, but what they got in reality is Abe Simpson Meets Shirley Temple - and little Shirley's been left pushing Abe in the wheelchair around the rest home.
And - yikes - some people think she's "America's Margaret Thatcher." Might want to rethink that, being up there onstage next to John McCain and all. Just sayin'.
The Republican Party has steered right into an iceberg and its fate in this November's election is sealed. With Sarah Palin, Capt. John McCain thinks he's plugged the leak. Sarah's just happy to be here, up on the bridge. My guess is all the other VP contenders, as they felt the icy water sloshing around their ankles and rising up their legs, suddenly remembered that they had something else to do, and backed away slowly - or turned and ran. But not poor Sarah Palin.
And maybe that was the ultimate measure of the Republicans' potential vice presidential nominees in this 2008 election year that is destined to go down as the Most Awful in Republican history:
You had to be dumber than John McCain to be his running mate.
And that, my friends, is no small achievement.
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