Mike Payne

September 24, 2009

First Glenn Beck goes ?libertarian.? Now we get word that Sarah ?Daisy Crockett? Palin gave a speech in Hong Kong that was so anti-government one observer noted: ?She didn?t sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative.?

Dylan Hales recently remarked that the newly “libertarian” Beck may at least prove a useful idiot. One might say the same of Palin. Unfortunately, after a certain level of idiocy, you cease being useful. Drawing converts with icons that make the base drool is one thing. But when the icons themselves do most of the drooling, it is quite another.

Glenn Beck regrets mistreating Ron Paul? I don?t buy it. When Dr. Paul and his movement posed a threat to the “conservative” establishment, Beck and co. worked urgently to snicker him off the main stage. Once Paul was safely back in his corner, it became acceptable for Beck and co. to address him like semi-adults. Now that there?s a Democrat in office, the good doctor is being cynically used by Beck and co. as a backdoor means of slamming the President and “big government” in general (but really just big Democratic government).

In a heartwarming coincidence, Sarah Palin has now also decided to get tough on the Fed. Hmmm, when she was the establishment running mate, she was all for the Fed-guided Wall Street bailouts. Her newfound stance also comes off as a cynical, Obama-baiting ploy and a clever exploitation of the anti-big government movement (meaning anti-big Democratic government). 

Beck and Palin’s conversion will ultimately be long on rhetoric, short on reality. Think of all those supposed limited government fans who have spent years quoting Reagan?s ?government is not the solution? line as though it has any relationship to Reagan’s actions in office (Palin namedropped Reagan in Hong Kong). Funny, they were all too happy to recite that very slogan on their way to voting Bush in a second time. 

And for those who thought Palin was in any way a break from the “compassionate,” politically correct tone of the neoconized Republican platform, get a whiff of this cringeworthy pandering from her Hong Kong spiel:

Personally, I?ve always been really interested in the ideas too about the land bridge. Ideas that maybe so long ago, had allowed Alaska to be physically connected to this part of our world so many years ago. My husband and my children, they?re part [unintelligible] Eskimo, Alaskan natives.  They?re our first people, and the connection that may have brought ancestors from here to there is fascinating to me. Making our world seem a little bit smaller, more united, to consider that connection that allowed sharing of peoples and bloodlines and wildlife and flora and fauna, that connection to me is quite fascinating.

She may as well have said, “I have Inuit friends.” No wonder McCain picked her. One fake maverick deserves another.