The Uses and Abuses of Sarah Palin and Jim Bunning

By Charlie Barber
Contributing Writer
Despite comment on how divisive she is, Sarah Palin rendered great service to Republicans when and where it really mattered,...at the Polls on November 4, 2008. 

In placing her perky persona and garbage mouth on the ticket with John McCain, clever people averted an even bigger landslide for Democrats by persuading tea bagger types, survivalists, racists, and other nut jobs to vote Republican one last time before going their gloomy way in 2009. 

Who else did the Republicans have for VP? Condi Rice or one of those white guys in the Primaries? Good luck!  Mitch McConnell? I see him step to a podium, and I wonder if someone in that room farted. And then his words emit the odor of deceit. John Boehner? One look at him, one word out of him, and I reach for my wallet.

I gained such insight from Republicans I hang out with for non-political reasons. Sarah P. was on FOX at the bar, and these men opined that she was still sexy, in a “country” sort of way, but no longer cute, and her obvious ignorance was nauseating.

Possibilities of less painful passage of legislation for ordinary Americans were thus lost, not by Barack Obama, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, but by the inability of decent people to imagine the common partisan motives and uncommon ruthlessness of those who put a mindless moron in position to ascend to the Presidency.

We should have seen it, but it might not have mattered if we had. Karl Rove had succeeded in the alchemist’s trick of “turning $#it into gold” with George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, but damage had been ongoing since the election of Ronald “Greed is Good” Reagan in 1980. One should never discount the contempt such strategies exhibit for democratic ideals and practices. Despite elections in 2006 and 2008 of responsible leadership, there is no quick fix.

Sarah Palin could care less. She has no more clue about the tsunami of fear and loathing she caters to than Joe McCarthy did in the late 1940s and ‘50s, but she, like he, is enjoying the ride, regardless of who gets drowned.

Her delivery, though undertaken in the guise of a “cutsie” co-ed cheerleader, reminds me of Governor George Wallace of Alabama, before a bullet caused him to rethink the nature of the tiger he had been riding—realistic fears of unemployment, mixed with unjustified hatred of people of color; justified resentment of fat cats in Wall Street and D.C., robbing folks from south Alabama to Northern Michigan, and unjustified contempt for the poorest victims of those robberies; genuine fear of Soviet and other dictatorships, and unfair loathing of those who fled here from such tyrannies.

Palin, McCarthy, and Wallace all share a notorious ancestry with the “Know Nothing Party,” of the 1850s, a vexation to Abraham Lincoln, among others, and well outlined by Richard Hofstadter in “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”

As Hofstadter explains, “fear works,”  which is why politicians give in to it so much. That is why Republicans loved McCarthyism, but dumped McCarthy when he went too far in devouring their own kind as well as Democrats. 

More cunning than “Tail Gunner Joe,”  Sarah “dumped” herself to make money, take cheap shots along the way, and thoroughly enjoy life, until enough time goes by for problems created mostly by Republicans to be blamed mostly on Democrats.

Sarah Palin is also smarter than Jim Bunning, the former Philadelphia Phillies and DetroitTigers fastballer, known in Kentucky nowadays for his screw ball pitches.
Senator Bunning’s hypocrisy in holding up badly needed relief for unemployed Americans was soon exposed, but he was telling the truth about how Congress all too often passes legislation, without taxation or cutting back in other areas of government; and thus adds to a deficit that weakens this nation internationally.

Although a lame duck, shutting the barn door after the horses were stolen, Jim Bunning is no worse than Dwight Eisenhower. In 1960 he warned about the “military industrial complex,” after eight years of his Presidency doing everything it could to empower that complex, including the overthrow of two democratic governments, in Iran in 1953 [oil], and in Guatemala in 1954[bananas], for the sake of corporate greed.

Liberal Democrats are finally fighting, but that is not enough. We must fight “smart,” because cynical enemies of democratic procedures and egalitarian ideals are not limited by scruples, decency, or good will. Only their arrogance betrays them.

Whining about what Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are unable to do misses the point of damage Republicans still do, in their consistent sellout of this country to big corporations, and their ability to con Americans into living down to our worst emotions, instead of living up to our better natures and ideals.

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