Palin: The GOP’s “Get Out of Jail Free” Card
Douthat writes of the McCain campaign’s paucity of ideas:
Writing in response to my suggestion that the McCain campaign has wanted for creativity, I think Rich Lowry makes a strong case that they’ve been quite tactically imaginative [...] What I had in mind, though, was ideological creativity – the sort of creativity, for instance, that might have provided stronger talking points for your new-minted veep nominee to trot out when the subject turns to, say, the state of the economy. The McCain camp has found exactly one good domestic-policy talking point to call their own – namely, offshore drilling – and that one was more or less forced on them by rising gas prices and pressure from right-wing talk radio. They have a potentially decent health care plan that they don’t want to talk about because they don’t know how to sell it, and a grab-bag of tax proposals that they don’t want to talk about because there’s not much for the middle class and the numbers don’t add up … and then, of course, they have earmarks. (ZZZzzzzz …) Which is why they’re spending most of their time trying to tear down Barack Obama – because the case against the Democratic nominee is the best case they really have.
But with Palinmania, the McCain campaign might not really have to make a case that’s any more compelling or coherent. She’s drawing in just the kind of middle-class heartland voters that a populist platform would target, but largely through identity politics rather than, you know, ideas or anything. I know that Douthat is a big Palin fan, and perhaps with good reason, but her inclusion on the McCain ticket might be the worst possible thing to happen to the kind of reformist conservatism he’s promoting. Palin is the GOP’s get-out-of-jail-free card, and lets them put off any confrontation with their own incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy for another day.
