“dumbfuckification” has been added to my vocabulary.  Thank you for building my language skills.

Yes, but Betty, they want her. Oh, for the glory days when America’s cartoon dominatrix sweetheart was actually on the GOP ticket! She was pure Politainment—why can’t they have that again?

Esp. considering the bleakness of the field without her. How’re they supposed to interest viewers in a horserace between amiable manniquins?

How’re they supposed to interest viewers in a horserace between amiable manniquins?

That’s really it right there. Mitt and his Amazing Technicolor Underwear is about as exciting as watching Hart To Hart reruns.

Sarah was a godsend for McCain at first. The media loved her because she was a pretty woman who seemed to be smart and responsible. That all should have ended with her first interview with Couric and Gibson, when she was exposed for the phony she truly is.

But the media let it slide, sensing that Palin would be a huge lightning rod for the Party. She never got the humiliation that was heaped on Dennis Kucinich or any of the other Dems who were out there.

I’ll say it again: if Sarah didn’t have her looks, she wouldn’t be where she is today. Let them put her at the top of the ladder; it will be that much sweeter when she falls off.

In the media reaction, I’m seeing a replay of a movie that ended badly—the George W. Bush Effect. Remember the run-up to the first Bush vs. Gore debate? The expectations for Bush were so incredibly low – Gore was widely expected to wipe up the floor with Bush.

Hell, we kinda saw the same thing with the Biden vs. Palin debate, except there was the underlying muttering about how Biden had to be careful about how badly he beat her up.

Kevin—that’s exactly right. Palin just refused to answer the questions and used her allotment of time to spout slogans. And she got away with it.

Donnah—I agree about Palin’s looks, which is why I find the argument that her ascendancy in the GOP is some sort of victory for women laughable. There have been wingnut women saying the same lame crap for decades. But when they looked like Phyllis Schlafly or Liddy Dole, no one gave a shit what they said. No starbursts.

The same is generally true of GOP pundits. When the mouth-breathers thought Ann Coulter was hawtt, they hung on her every word. Now that she’s 50 years old, she’s mostly dropped off the radar.

What I remember is how Gore’s having intelligent answers, carefully considered positions, and being annoyed as all fuck at Bush’s arrogant dumbassery was painted as being “too smart”.

Yeah.  Fuck you, media.

Personally, I’m disappointed we haven’t seen more pictures of Sarah’s boob job. Talk about hard news…

You positively sound like Bob Somerby here.  Plus profanity and minus condescension of course.

Well, I don’t think it’s quite the same as 2000. Bush had his daddy’s coattails giving him some patina of establishment respectability, and there wasn’t a sour economy, two wars, and oil gushing in the Gulf as the backdrop to that election—ironically, thanks to Clinton leaving a budget surplus (thanks again for blowing through that, you “fiscally conservative” assholes). I’m not convinced that the “there’s no difference between them so let’s go with the GOP for a break, plus Gore is BOR-ING!” line is going to play so well in Fucked Nation 2012. And younger voters, at least to judge by the ones I interact with (who, admittedly, are a self-selecting urban liberal arts college bunch so not representative) really think Palin is a joke—and the women even moreso than the men.

And remember—the “Mama Grizzlies”—not even the “18 million strong” of PUMA—didn’t turn out for Palin on the ticket the first time. Women actually don’t like her. They really, really don’t like her. I mean sure, a subset of rock-ribbed GOP women do—but that’s not enough to carry purple states. Now, I’ll grant you that their menfolk who fantasize about riding Palin hard and putting her up wet might be a different story—but they were never gonna vote for the socialist darkie, anyway.

I don’t see a whole lot of independent women going her way because the media tells them they’re going to. Remember—the media told women they’d vote for Bush because he strutted around with his package on the aircraft carrier. Yet even old IronJaws John Kerry won more women in 2004.

Can she win the nomination? Possibly. And there’s a lot of time between now and then. Hell, there’s a lot of time between now and November of THIS year, which is why all the “we’re doomed!” prognostication is best ignored, particularly if it’s coming from bloggers whose response to most things Obama is to wring hands, wet pants, cry defeat, repeat—“We’ll NEVER pass healthcare now that Brown has won! Aiiieee!”

Which of course isn’t YOU, Betty. I just can’t get too worked up over what shiny object the media magpies are focusing on this week.

Wheee! Operation Chaos v. 2.0.

At the risk of being repetitive, I don’t think the media is in on the dumbfuckification plot. That would require a level of knowledge I just don’t see any more.

Now the average schmoe is just too unskilled or dumbfucked to do anything but write glorified style and gossip columns. The creeps in charge only know the schmoe is cheap, he doesn’t talk back or waste time (and money) on boring reasearch and his articles can easily be cut to make room for more ads!

I tweeted Sarah Palin today to suggest that, based on her video, she needs to rename her movement “Mama Polar Bears.”

I also think that there is a very good chance that she’ll simply make everyone sick of her by 2012. We didn’t see that much of George W. Bush before he ran—maybe because Fredo wasn’t supposed to be running that year and Jeb was the guy everyone assumed would be the Bush II candidate. So no one (including the media) dug very deeply into Bush’s background, and he wasn’t tweeting and facebooking every idiotic word-salad notion that came into his pinhead. The media mostly work on the “It’s new, it’s new, I want it, I want it!” mode and assume that most of America is the same way. And maybe we are—but in this case, Palin’s novelty has already started wearing off. She’s not even selling out all of her own public appearances, as I recall. And those are where you’d expect the hardcore fervent fans to show up in droves.

And let us not forget that the media also proclaimed Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani the inevitable 2008 candidates, and then, when Rudy imploded, decided that Fred Thompson would be the Reaganesque game-changer.

Since we know who will be the Democratic nominee in 2012, I might as well register as a Republican to vote in the primary.  Go Sarah!

Palin just refused to answer the questions and used her allotment of time to spout slogans. And she got away with it.

I’m not sure how much she did get away with it. OK, she wasn’t run out of town on a rail as she should have been, but even over here I know of some erstwhile Republicans who didn’t vote that way primarily on the basis of her VP debate performance, let alone the other nonsense.

Bush had name recognition (the W notwithstanding), and would have probably seen out his term as Texas governator if he hadn’t fallen into the presidency. What we knew of his performance in that earlier office was good enough for those who voted for him, and warning enough for those who shuddered at the prospect.

I think the key for Palin is if she can get the Rovian machine, or its successor, on board, at which point we’ll get to judge how well those tactics still work.

I still think she’ll screw it up if she gets the nomination, and I reckon just about the only way she’ll manage that is if by some unprecedented fluke she’s handed it by acclaim, because I can’t see her winning a hard-fought primary. It’s too much like hard work for her.

I watched the Biden/Palin debate at a bar with my Drinking Liberally pals, and I remember quite distinctly that the audience guinea pigs with their reaction knobs were not buying her shit.

She was appalling. And she’s not going to get any better or smarter, because she doesn’t need to.

I don’t think she has the stamina to get through a grueling nomination campaign, and plenty of Republicans find her as off-putting as Dems do.

I agree with Oblomova that comparing Bush 2000 to Palin 2012 is apples v. oranges.

Eh, she’s not going to run. She’s just going to tease and play coy until she’s got no choice but to announce that no, she won’t be running because, gosh, the media would just journorape her little girls all over again.  Then she’ll go on and milk her dwindling fame for more 6 digit “speaking” gigs and then trade it all in for a talking head spot on Fox.

Palin has been lying since the first day she was introduced to the nation.  Remember the bridge to nowhere that the media just couldn’t bring themselves to research?

I wonder if “who would you rather have a special needs child with” will be the new “who would you rather have a beer with”.