THE WEEK - The Bullpen

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Will Republican tactics succeed?

From Wasilla to Washington, the Party of No has become the Party of Lies. Racing the clock, Republicans are hoping to win before economic recovery exposes them.

Sarah Palin sets the tone for a narrow, spiteful corner of American politics. That corner was occupied by the Tea Party convention last week in Nashville, where Palin served up a strong, carefully-brewed, neo-con-written speech featuring a blend of slurs steeped in personal animus toward Barack Obama. 

There were lies of a general nature, including the palm-reading Palin’s suggestion that the President is so out of his depth, so stupid—at least that’s what the cheering crowd heard—that he can’t function without a teleprompter. And the contradictory, but equally bogus, claim that Obama is a feeble egghead -- appealing to an old prejudice against intellectuals – who’s not up to the job. “We need a commander-in-chief,” Palin said, “not a law professor.”

And there were specific lies. Obama is, in Palin’s telling, soft on terrorism. Why, he never uses the word “war” when referring to it.

That’s a lie.

Obama “apologizes” for “our men and women in uniform.” She never mentioned the President’s name, but her malevolent meaning was clear.

That’s another lie.

The stimulus didn’t create “one job.”

There’s one more.

With jobs lagging recovery, Palin reveled in the frustrations of the moment: “How is that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” she sneered.

With her “oh gosh” peddling of hate, Palin has hit a new low not only in her rhetoric but in The Washington Post/ABC poll. Seventy percent of Americans now view her as unqualified to be President. Still, I strongly favor her nomination; she’s a sure loser. (I know, some Democrats once said that about Ronald Reagan. But to compare her with him is to validate Marx’s observation that history repeats itself as farce.)

Although Palin is the nominee Republican strategists fear most – they, too, are convinced she would sink the party -- I believe that in at least once sense she’s eminently qualified to be the Republican standard bearer. Bathed in the klieg lights of a media that cannot resist her performance art, she perfectly expresses the low standards to which the Republicans have now repaired: When “no” isn’t enough, just lie and smear the other side. Palin was snarky, snide and in a perverse way entertaining in her Tea Party keynote last Saturday. But she just kicked off the week. The Republican march of deception and personal destruction plowed right through the paralyzing snowdrifts in Washington.

The GOP twisted the truth and portrayed the Administration as naïve or worse in dealing with terrorism because the underwear bomber had been read his Miranda rights. It then emerged that Republicans on the Intelligence Committees had been told on Christmas Day that he was in FBI custody; they were shocked, shocked to find out that this meant a Miranda warning—under rules established by the Bush Administration—rules which they certainly ought to know.

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-- Edited by Sanders on Friday 12th of February 2010 11:03:07 AM