She’s All Yours

After viewing the movie version of “Game Change,” WaPo putz Richard Cohen channels the late David Broder to draw this curious conclusion about “the Palin effect” on US politics:

So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.

What a steaming load of horseshit. While the left has its share of dunderheads, I’m afraid the Republicans have pretty much cornered the market on prideful ignorance. When was the last time a Democrat on the national stage appealed to the base via anti-intellectualism? William Jennings Bryant maybe? We ceded the Know-Nothing vote for good when the Dixiecrats finally got over Reconstruction and switched party allegiance to the GOP a few generations ago.

As for “a hatred of all things Washington,” all politicians rail against Washington because of its dysfunction, but Democrats aren’t the ones peddling the notion that “government” in the abstract is an evil thing. We have tedious purity ponies who’d rather go hungry than take half a loaf, but they don’t run the party. And Democrats have to compromise because our liberal base is smaller than the GOP’s conservative base; most people in positions of actual power get that.

The Democrats are an exasperating, contentious lot who push me past my patience a hundred times a day. But one of the reasons I stick with them is because the Democratic Party, at least in its current incarnation, is incapable of producing a Sarah Palin.

Former McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt has been making the rounds since “Game Change” debuted, frankly admitting his own complicity in putting forth a “manifestly unprepared” candidate. Schmidt claims the Democrats did something similar when John Edwards became John Kerry’s running mate in 2004.

Edwards certainly was a lightweight and a smarmy, shape-shifting asshole to boot. But if you put aside the sex scandal (and lord knows that’s a bipartisan failing), Edwards belongs in the Romney class of entitled, ambitious jerks rather than in the Palin category of frighteningly ignorant dangers to the republic. Sorry, Republicans: you own Palinism.