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She Completes You

But one sign in Albuquerque may have summed it up for Republican stalwarts: “Sarah — you had us at hello.” ~The Los Angeles Times That really is the point, isn’t it?  All Palin had to do was to show up, and these people were overjoyed regardless of what Palin had or hadn’t done.  Much of […]

But one sign in Albuquerque may have summed it up for Republican stalwarts: “Sarah — you had us at hello.” ~The Los Angeles Times

That really is the point, isn’t it?  All Palin had to do was to show up, and these people were overjoyed regardless of what Palin had or hadn’t done.  Much of the enthusiastic response from rank-and-file Republicans seems to be based in a simple desire for validation from the higher-ups, and in satisfying this disturbing hunger for approval it is as if all of McCain’s errors are forgiven and forgotten.  This is exactly what Bush thought would happen when he nominated Harriet Miers on the assumption that evangelicals and religious conservatives would see her as one of them, and to some extent that is what happened.  When the Bush administration tried to browbeat critics of the Miers nomination (which, I must stress, was a terrible nomination) with accusations of sexism and elitism, the same kinds of people who are now flinging those charges at Palin’s critics were outraged and became even more fiercely opposed to Miers.  

For a long time I have railed against the irrationality of mass democracy–this was one of the early themes of this blog–and I fully subscribe to the Kuehnelt-Leddihn view that democracy is inherently identitarian and therefore at odds with an order capable of respecting political diversity and liberty.  We have not really seen such an unbounded irrational response (both pro- and anti-) to a political figure, except perhaps to Obama post-Wright or maybe to the Clintons in the ’90s, in recent memory.  Certainly there has never been such a sudden, dramatic polarization over a politician as there has been in the last ten days over Palin that I can recall.    

It is possible to resist the lures of different nostrisms that try to seduce you into ignoring policy and focusing on markers that show your political tribal allegiance, but most people respond to the cues they are given and the provocations made against their “side” in any given political contest with remarkably little resistance.  The same people on the right who happily derided Huckabee as ignorant hick who should have gone back to the backwoods praise Palin to the skies for the very traits that were supposed to be disqualifying for Huckabee.  The same people who pushed Romney’s candidacy until its failure was undeniable now preach the importance of Palin’s authenticity!  Even those who have warned against conservatives trapping themselves in a cocoon are pulled into it, perhaps on the grounds that butterflies eventually emerge from cocoons. 

In fairness, it is certainly easier to resist the urge to rally ’round a party’s candidate when you have numerous, strong objections to the policies defended by the leaders of that party.  It is not as tempting to support someone out of an instinct to defend shared values and culture when you assume that the entire exercise is something of a scam.  When you take it for granted that the pander is designed to sucker people into endorsing policies that are directly detrimental to the very way of life and culture in question, you feel less inspired to defend this or that politician against attacks from the left.  On the other hand, if you are still under the impression that the GOP takes cultural conservative concerns seriously and does not simply use them as election-time bait, you may think it is really important to defend Palin.  Sure, you may say, reflexive loyalty, groupthink and a failure of critical thinking may have brought conservatives to their present state, but this example of reflexive loyalty, groupthink and failure of critical thinking is vital for the greater good.

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