Conor Friedersdorf has joined the small but hardy band of conservatives (now holding steady at two) who are calling for Palin to be removed or to resign from the ticket.  Conor will get no argument from me when he says that she is not qualified, but I think he misjudges things when he thinks that there would not be a significant revolt.  I could see this leading to a very healthy outcome of conservative alienation from the GOP so intense that it might lead to some significant changes either in the priorities of the party or in the emergence of an alternative movement on the right.  More likely, though, things would revert to what they were before Palin was picked as suddenly energized evangelicals and activists lose interest and remember all the reasons why they dislike McCain.  Turnout would decline, the campaign would be in disarray (which is not an undesirable thing from my perspective) and the post-defeat recriminations would ultimately work to the detriment of conservatives.  Whichever sorry soul was tapped to replace her would be spurned by these voters simply to punish McCain.  Personally, I do not find this prospect all that disturbing at the presidential level, but it could be a problem if the GOP minority in the House loses many more seats in a wipeout election. 

Conor may think that this gives these voters too little credit, but there are two things he is overlooking.  Many conservatives do not necessarily accept the idea that she is unqualified, because they seem to think that her political career and family life together provide the evidence that she is.  Conor sums up the problems with Palin’s record, or lack thereof, very succinctly, but for most of these voters that either does not matter or they don’t believe it to be true.  More important, they have identified with her and bonded with her to such a degree that just as her addition was received with hosannas, because she was “one of us,” her removal would be the cause for lamentations and cursing.  Throwing overboard someone who has already been lauded as the next Reagan will provoke a grassroots fury that will make the anti-bailout protests to Congress seem like a mild difference of opinion.  Some over-enthusiastic admirers may have compared her to Joan of Arc (never a good idea), but they are not now going to accept betraying her for what they will perceive to be the appeasement of the enemy.    

Four weeks’ worth of arguments that she is more qualified than Obama will not be forgotten quickly; the resentment against journalists and liberals stoked at the convention before, during and after her speech remains; the reflex to reject an elitist critique of her has not gone away.  Miers was criticized and rejected early on by movement activists and pundits.  Palin, on the other hand, has largely been embraced by the same people who refused to defend Miers and demanded the withdrawal of her nomination from the beginning.  Having deemed Palin not only acceptable but outstanding a few weeks ago, few are going to backtrack and admit that they, like McCain, were profoundly wrong.  Those who do will be ostracized and ignored, dismissed as RINOs or worse.  Conor calls on conservative elites to lead the way in pushing for Palin’s removal.  Leave aside that there is not enough time, and none of the other short-listed candidates would accept the nomination, which would be like accepting the political equivalent of a cup of hemlock.  Even if there were a plausible replacement and plenty of time, the people Conor calls on to act would not play ball.  Meanwhile, the voters Conor is talking about heed the words of Hewitt and Hannity, who I promise you will be livid if Palin is removed; George Will and David Brooks are not their guides.  Most of the heterodox bloggers Brooks mentioned either wouldn’t agree with Conor’s “reclamation” project or, like me, wouldn’t care if the GOP ticket goes down in flames. 

Conor says that those who “prefer fealty to the principles of the founders, a preference for small government, an appreciation of competence and a tempermental aversion to rapid, risky change” will welcome her removal, but what he misses is that many of these same people simply don’t accept the critique of her competence even when it comes from the right.  Unfortunately, once a critique has been identified as a left-wing trope there is tremendous resistance to accepting the idea that real conservatives might hold this view; this is true on policy, and it is probably even more true when it comes to criticizing popular candidates.  No one who wants to have a future in the movement is going to light out on an anti-Palin crusade in the name of principle.  Previously, Conor has expressed his aversion, which Peter Suderman and I share, to the sort of cultural lifestyle politics that seems to be driving enthusiasm for Palin, and because he properly finds this politics so substantively lacking I think he may now underestimate just how powerful its hold is.   

Conor asks:

Can conservatism survive as an intellectually viable political movement if its adherents privilege the electoral chances of the GOP above averting the installation of an unkown and by all outward appearances woefully unqualified person in the White House?

I reply: Conservatism is an intellectually viable political movement?  Has something changed recently?  I am only partly joking.  My point would be that the same conservative movement that has welcomed Palin as a conquering hero cannot now throw her out into the cold on the grounds of some supposed intellectual rigor and the defense of venerable tradition.  The precious impulse to show themselves to be more diverse, feminist and cutting-edge than the Democrats will not suddenly give way to newfound concern about complementarity of the sexes.     

Our C11 colleague Joe Carter is having none of it.  I think Carter overreaches with his initial point about Adm. Stockdale.  Stockdale was, he rightly notes, a great man who was unfairly ridiculed for his performance in the ’92 campaign as Perot’s running mate, and Carter does not push the comparison too far, but it is because there is no real comparison between Stockdale’s qualifications and Palin’s that the example does not make the point Carter wants it to make.  Even though he is right to insist that a few performances on national television should not be the sole basis on which to judge the fitness of candidates, I think he gets something important wrong.  Being able to communicate one’s views and agenda in both speeches and interviews is an important part of the position Palin is seeking, but more important than that is evidence of readiness to command, and I’m afraid there simply isn’t any to cite in her favor.  Carter does overlook Conor’s paragraph in which he dispatches Palin’s record with a few quick thrusts.  It is possible that he accidentally missed it, because it does not take much to deal fatal blows to the official narrative of Palin the champion-of-reform.  There is also something to be said for being taken seriously.  Forget SNL and don’t worry whether trendy hipsters dislike Palin; it is far more damning when you have reasonably fair-minded journalists frequently referring to her as ignorant and pathetic.  It can’t help when you have a steady stream of people describing the prospects of her holding high office to be terrifying.  Bottom line: a VP candidate should not be attracting this much attention unless it is very positive attention. 

Yglesias made an interesting point about Jack Cafferty’s disgust with Palin:

I first got to virtually know Cafferty when he was a long-time local news reporter and anchor on WPIX-11 in New York City. There, and after his shift over to CNN, his persona is very much that of a working class outer boroughs type. The kind of guy who voted for Rudy Giuliani and, crucially, for Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s.

To put it another way, when you are losing not just the support but the basic respect of the Caffertys out there, you have become an electoral liability pure and simple.  The argument against Palin’s qualifications used to be deflected by saying, “McCain has to get elected first!  Palin will make that possible.”  I’m sure it seemed that way a couple weeks ago.  Now Carter has undertaken the more strenuous, thankless task of insisting that she is clearly qualified regardless of the fact that she is now an electoral liability, and it is no criticism of his article to say that he simply can’t make that case because I don’t think anyone can make it persuasively.  Carter makes the mistake, however, of critiquing Conor’s argument with the claim that substance doesn’t matter that much or a variant of the absurd “so what if she can’t remember the name of the Ugandan health minister?” line:

Conor also appears to put a much greater emphasis on the ability to memorize a policy briefing book than on character.

I’m not sure that Conor puts emphasis on memorization so much as he is stressing an ability to grasp and understand complex policy questions at some level.  It is not as if there is a written record that shows that Palin is an outstanding intellect with significant policy knowledge who just bungles interviews.  Goodness knows that I would not want to be judged solely on my public speaking, but I would like to think that I have produced a few things over the years that could be taken seriously.  We’ve gone down the “he may not know a lot, but he has good instincts and he’s got advisors for that other stuff” road before with Mr. Bush, and I don’t think most conservatives have liked most of the ultimate policy or electoral results.  Indeed, we have discovered that Mr. Bush, the one with the good instincts, actually has terrible instincts when it comes to all sorts of things and relies far too much on those instincts when making important decisions.  In case I have not made the point clear enough, Conor already made it:

Never again should a Western governor of questionable competence win over conservatives with nothing more than promises of tax cuts, religious faith, and the empty claim of an outsider’s perspective.

Of course, I agree entirely, but it will do no good to say “Never again!” when it has already happened again and it is now too late to undo it.  Conor’s critique of Palin is entirely right, but trying to talk conservatives out of Palinophilia is like trying to talk a friend out of staying in a bad relationship–it won’t work, and your friend will take the advice very poorly.      

Update: How poorly will people take what Conor is saying?  Kathleen Parker, who already called for Palin to step down, gives you an idea:

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should “off” myself.

So I think people are taking it pretty well, don’t you?

Parker asks:

But what is a true conservative? One who doesn’t think or question and who marches in lock step with The Party?

For many people, that does seem to have a lot to do with it.  It is always a revelation to conservatives who find themselves on the other side of an issue just how much a majority of their fellows defines conservatism as lockstep agreement with whatever the GOP line happens to be.  Denunciation, if not necessarily death threats, is the usual response.  The GOP is against nation-building?  So are they.  The GOP is in favor of nation-building?  They couldn’t be happier, and anyone who is against it probably hates America.  More important, even if they don’t change their beliefs as dramatically as this they are usually quite willing to support the pols who do.

Parker continues:

The emotional pitch of many comments suggests an overinvestment in Palin as “one of us.”

I’m not sure what it can mean to have an “overinvestment” of this kind.  It seems to me that you allow your candidate preferences to be driven by emotional and identity-driven concerns that have nothing to do with the candidate’s merits, or you don’t.  Once you identify a candidate as “one of us,” that connection, that sense of shared belonging, is not something that is going to be constrained by rational appeals.  It can be easily taken to excess, which is why it is an undesirable trait of democracy and something that generally should not be encouraged even if it is inevitable in a democracy.  If a criticism of Palin was, by extension, a criticism of her supporters and their way of life, which is how they see it, it does not matter where it comes from or whether it makes sense.  There is something both admirable and worrisome in the absolutely unreflective quality of this loyalty: the willingness to stick by your symbolic champion shows a certain integrity, but it also shows that the basis for your attachment to that person is based pretty much entirely on symbolism and on what the person represents to the world rather than on whether the person is fit for the office in question.     

Second Update: In one of her more recent Couric outtakes, Palin says that she reads “most” or “all” newspapers, which any blogger has to find impressive (ahem), and she tells us that she has a “great appreciation” for the media (what?).  She has a “vast variety of sources.”  Also, Alaska “isn’t a foreign country,” she says, but I have been reliably informed that Alaska is close to some foreign countries.  What is there to say?