Watching Sarah Palin self destruct is a thing of beauty and, I daresay, inevitable considering what an extraordinary lightweight she was to begin with and how she not only has failed to grow on the national stage but has turned making a fool of herself into a cottage industry. We also can be thankful that it is increasingly likely that Palin will be a pimple on the ass of presidential campaign history by the time the 2012 election rolls around and we can be spared further fantasies from the aroused male bloc of the Party of Beavis and Butthead as well as her own bloviations.
An update on the Killa From Wazilla:
* She has been dumped as the headline speaker at the annual fundraising dinner for the Republicans Party’s House and Senate campaign organization. Newt Gingrich replaces her.
* While Palin’s staff claims that she had never committed to the dinner — another of the countless lies small and large that emanate from her midst like cow farts from a dairy farm — the snub is an indication of the disfavor into which she has fallen with some influential party bigs.
* That disfavor stems in part from warfare between Palin’s gubernatorial staff and her presidential PAC, which includes affluent trial attorney and Scientologist John Coale, the husband of Fox News talking head Greta Van Susteren and a reliable lightning rod for controversy.
* It also stems in part from Palin’s annoying habit of dissing fellow Republicans, most recently her claim that none of John McCain’s presidential campaign staffers would pray with her, and a forthcoming article in Men’s Journal in which hubbo Todd blames the Republican National Committee for the infamous $150,000 wardrobe scandal.
* In a recent poll on who the 2012 Republican nominee should be conducted by Rush Limbaugh, listeners went for Mitt Romney by 30 percent, with Bobby Jindal at 14, and Sarah Palin tied with Ron Paul at 13. Some 44 percent of listeners said they wished they had better choices.
* The Alaska legislature is not taking kindly to her recent appointments, having rejected two, nor her pandering to the almighty conservative base in the Lower 48 by announcing that she was refusing stimulus money earmarked for education, much of it for schools in poor communities like Wasilla with dropouts like daughter Bristol and for special-needs children like son Trig.
Then there is Palin’s personal life, which may not be able the withstand the kind of scrutiny it underwent in the 2008 campaign.
While hypocrisy is no bar to holding public office and is, in fact, the coin of the right-wing Republican realm, Palin serves up hypocrisy in Alaska-sized portions by using her brood, including poor Trig, as stage props and blathering about Family Values and who are true Americans while Bristol and the father of their child, whose mother is a drug dealer, are dropouts whose plans to marry dropped out sometime after Election Day.
Shaun Mullen is a former The Moderate Voice columnist. Over a long career with newspapers, this award-winning editor and reporter covered the Vietnam War, O.J. Simpson trials, Clinton impeachment circus and coming of Osama bin Laden, among many other big stories. He blogs at Kiko’s House.