Richard Spencer

September 12, 2008

Srdja Trifkovic has voiced the hope, held by many of us in the alternative Right, that Sarah Palin would offer some pushback against McCain and the neocons if the GOP were victorious in November: 

Sarah Palin would be sworn in before the expiry of McCain?s first term. What would she do? I don?t know, but I am pretty certain that her foreign policies would not be any worse than those proposed by the three men. The Washingtonian ?foreign policy community? would try to manipulate her, of course, but she is a tough nut to crack. Over the past few years she readily confronted an Old Boys? Network and defeated Frank Murkowski, the sitting Republican governor, in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary. Before that she resigned a State sinecure, protesting the ?lack of ethics? of fellow Republican members, and went on to destroy the political careers of Randy Ruedrich, GOP State Chairman, and Gregg Renkes, a former Alaska Attorney General.

Mrs. Palin?s alleged weaknesses are her strengths. Being an innocent abroad, in the dangerous world modelled on Hobbes and Darwin, is preferable to having ?experience? in the obsessive attempt to tame and conquer that world. The Weekly Standard cabal and their ilk will be hard-pressed to make President Palin obey a bunch of Manhattanite intellectual pseuds, let alone to internalize their foreign policy schemes that are evil, stupid, and harmful to our troops? safety: unlike any laptop bombardier, she has a son on his way to Iraq. I?d say that it is at least 50-50 President Palin would act as a foreign policy realist who?d refrain from new ?missions,? ?engagements? and ?force projections.? That translates into circa 20 percent chance of America conducting a sane foreign policy, for the first time in decades, some time before 2012.

Then came her interview with Charlie, in which she seemed a bit confused about the nature of the Bush Doctrine but basically reiterated most every other neocon platitude. It?s starting to look like Kristol & Co. have already gotten to her.

I almost expected the good lady to turn her head and reveal tooth marks left by some neocon vampire who had dragged the innocent woman down into the dungeons of the Project for the New American Century on 17th St. and condemned her to life among the democracy-spreading undead?Noooo!

Larison is far from sanguine: 

With respect to Dr. Trifkovic, I think his hope that ?The Weekly Standard cabal and their ilk will be hard-pressed to make President Palin obey a bunch of Manhattanite intellectual pseuds, let alone to internalize their foreign policy schemes that are evil, stupid, and harmful to our troops? safety? was misplaced. 

She has already embraced these schemes, and I see no reason why she would reject them were she one day to become President.

UPDATE: Jacob Heilbrunn makes much the same point here.