Why is the GOP so dysfuncational rather than just feisty? William M. Daley, Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff from 2011 to 2012 nails it in the Washington Post, noting something I’ve pointed to in posts for many years: the party’s watershed moment in 2008 when Arizona Sen. John McCain forever tarnished his legacy and raised questions about his judgment when he chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate.
Yes, THE Sarah Palin: the one who is still adored in many GOP circles even though she is now to politics what Zsa Zsa Gabor was to acting: someone who is now famous for being famous, not for the intrinsic quality of what she did in her proclaimed profession. Daley’s column is worth looking at in detail here on a site with a word in it’s name that many Republicans (and Democrats) now hate:
When The Post’s front page declares: “Republicans are on the verge of ceasing to function as a national party,” it’s time to ask: How did this come to pass?
You can choose from a litany of insurrections, government shutdowns and other self-inflicted wounds. But this year’s carnival-like GOP presidential primary makes one event, in retrospect, stand out as a crucial turning point on the road to upheaval: the 2008 embrace of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat from the presidency.
I’ve noted the same thing here over the years. The impact was not merely on the campaign. Palin began championing some forces that John McCain had fought during his onetime incarnation as a “maverick.” In that campaign and other parts of his post-2000 incarnation, at times McCain seemed as much a political maverick as a VW was a Ford Maverick.
Palin’s blatant lack of competence and preparedness needs no belaboring. What’s critical is that substantive, serious Republican leaders either wouldn’t or couldn’t declare, before or after the election: “This is not what our party stands for. We can and must do better.”
By the campaign’s end, GOP operatives were shielding Palin from even the simplest questions….
….Palin became a Fox News fixture, reinforcing the newly formed tea party’s “never compromise” demands. Bombast, not reason, reigned. Now the “settle for flash” aura of Palin’s candidacy looks like a warning that the party was prizing glib, red-meat rhetoric over reasoned solutions.
Sadly, Palin owes her fame to 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, who is generally one of the party’s more thoughtful and substantive veterans. He has championed reforms to immigration and campaign finance. He denounced “wacko birds” who stymie Congress to pursue hard-right agendas with no chance of passage. Whether McCain actively sought Palin in 2008 or passively yielded to aides’ pressure, he set a new standard for GOP candidates who rely on lots of sizzle and little substance.
Once McCain put Palin on the ticket, Republican “grown-ups,” who presumably knew better, had to bite their tongues. But after the election, when they were free to speak their minds, they either remained quiet or abetted the dumbing-down of the party. They stood by as Donald Trump and others noisily pushed claims that Obama was born in Kenya. And they gladly rode the tea party tiger to sweeping victories in 2010 and 2014.
Historians will fully reach conclusion in coming years about how the Republican establishment lost control of their party branding. The reasons were likely these:
—They didn’t want to admit exactly how poor — and dangerous — their judgment was putting Palin on the ticket. Nor their reasons for plucking her out of her role as a governor and putting her on the national stage.
—They wanted their party to win and saw the GOP could tap into and cultivate rage. They wouldn’t take on the Tea Party rhetoric, which is really a manifestation how how the talk radio political culture’s tail has wagged the GOP elephant.
MORE:
Now that tiger is devouring the GOP establishment. Party elders had hoped new presidential debate rules would give them greater control. But they are watching helplessly as Trump leads the pack and House Republicans engage in fratricide.
It’s hard to feel much sympathy. The Republican establishment’s 2008 embrace of Palin set an irresponsibly low bar. Coincidence or not, a batch of nonsense-spewing, hard-right candidates quickly followed, often to disastrous effect.
Daily cites some famous examples then ends with this:
Now the Republicans’ leading presidential contenders are Trump — who vows to make Mexico pay for a “great, great wall” on the U.S. side of the border — and Ben Carson, who questions evolution and asks why victims of the latest mass shooting didn’t “attack the gunman.”
This isn’t to heap new scorn on Palin. But let’s not diminish the recklessness of those who championed her vice presidential candidacy. It was well known that McCain, 72 at the time of his nomination, had undergone surgery for skin cancer. It wasn’t preposterous to think Palin could become president.
Palin’s selection of Sarah Palin made George H.W. Bush’s selection of Dan Quayle look like the selection of Theodore Roosevelt. (You betchya)
Republicans ask Americans to give them full control of the government, adding the presidency to their House and Senate majorities. This comes as Trump and Carson consistently top the GOP polls. Republican leaders brought this on themselves. Trump calls Palin “a special person” he’d like in his Cabinet. That seems only fair, because he’s thriving in the same cynical value system that puts opportunistic soundbites above seriousness, preparedness and intellectual heft.
Never have we seen a better example of the law of unintended consequences.
The larger downside?
In November 2016 there’s a risk the United States could suffer the consequences of McCain’s and the GOP’s establishment’s unintended — and politically negligent — consequences.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.