It’s been entertaining listening to the right-wing noise machine the last ten days. After weeks of depicting Senator Obama as a “celebrity” candidate, they have been fawning over Governor Palin like a school boy with a crush.
Since no one knew about Palin prior McCain’s selection, rightists been busy constructing a glowing caricature out of what had been a blank slate. And so we are presented with a wonder-woman hockey mom who fights corruption and government spending. Talk radio has been praising her because she lives the “American life,” whatever that is. She even wears a skirt!
Some of the bloom may finally be coming off the Palin rose, at least in print and on TV news:
We’ve now had a week of blaring headlines and one-liners about Sarah Palin as the mavericky, pork-busting reformer from Alaska. But we seem to be witnessing the first stirrings of a backlash and a dawning realization that the ‘Sarah Palin’ we’ve heard so much about over the last few days is a fraud of truly comical dimensions.
But regardless of what we learn about the true Palin, she has served a purpose. As Arianna Huffington notes, she’s been a useful distraction from the real problems confronting America:
The point is that Palin, and the circus she’s brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.
Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party’s record, and John McCain’s role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.
Her critics like to say that Palin hasn’t accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she’s succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record — and McCain’s complicity in it. My friends, that’s accomplishment we can believe in.
I’ll be more specific–every day not spent discussing the economy is a victory for McCain. It was no accident that the economy was barely mentioned at the Republican convention. The fact is that it is in worse shape than government statistics indicate. It’s the trump card in the Obama hand, if the campaign stays on message. Therefore Obama must resist the temptation to be sidetracked by the Trojan Moose.