Getting At The Truth About Palin, Ctd.

Andrew Sprung responds to Frum:

If Palin is as ineffectual a campaigner as Frum...implies, there's nothing to worry about - except perhaps, from Frum's point of view, that she'd capture the lunatic rump of the Republican Party and then go down to crushing defeat in the general election. Some political partisans rub their hands with glee at the thought of the opposition nominating an extremist. But that's a chance I'd never be willing to take. As a Democrat, I want a competent Republican nominee (and haven't seen one since Dole). In times of severe stress, dangerous clowns have been democratically elected in more than one country.

Electing Palin would be a sure sign of rapid national decline, and judging from the '08 election it seems unlikely: Palin plainly dragged the McCain ticket down; a huge majority of Americans judged her unfit for office. But again, under pressure of disaster (say, renewed and accelerated financial meltdown) a kind of psychosis can overtake electorates. That's why Palin bears watching, and outing, and hopefully definitive discrediting. Though if her dozens of documented lies and idiocies and governing malpractices haven't done it yet, it's hard to fathom exactly what would knock her out.