Hysterical (and wonderful) Rolling Stones article on the election.

[Hamlette]

John McCain and Sarah Palin, after all, represented two completely different approaches to Republican conservatism. McCain comes from the school of politicking that goes after as many votes as possible by waving a flag and saying as little as possible, which is to say he was basically a third-way Democrat with a Goldwater fetish. His basic plan heading into the general election seemed strikingly similar to that of the dipshit vice president character from the uninspiring but weirdly prescient Chris Rock movie Head of State, who ran on a platform of "I've been vice president for the last eight years, I'm a war hero and I'm Sharon Stone's cousin."

McCain's shtick wasn't exactly that, but it was close. He was a war hero who married an heiress to a beer distributorship and had been in the Senate since the Mesozoic Era. His greatest strength as a politician had up until this year been his ability to "reach across the aisle," a quality that in the modern Republican Party was normally about as popular as open bisexuality. His presence atop the ticket this year was evidence of profound anxiety within the party about its chances in the general election. After eight disastrous years of Bush, they thought they had lost the middle — so they picked a middling guy to get it back.

Which made sense, right up until the moment when they stuck him with Pinochet in heels for a running mate. Sarah Palin would have been a brilliant choice as a presidential nominee — and she will be, in 2012, when she leads the inevitable Republican counter-revolution against Obama's presidency. She's a classic divide-and-conquer politician, an unapologetic Witch Hunter and True Believer with a gift for whipping up the mob against the infidel. In a way that even George W. Bush never was, she is Karl Rove's wet dream, the Osama bin Laden of soccer moms, crusading against germs, communism, atheism and other such unclean elements strictly banned by American law.

snip

When Obama took the stage in Grant Park as president-elect, that question was answered. We pulled off an amazing thing here, delivering on our society's most ancient promises, in front of a world that still largely thought of us as the home of Bull Connor's fire hose. This dumbed-down, degraded election process of ours has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom. We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire-decline.

For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24375710/requiem_for_a_maverick/print

[Atman]

1. Mick and Keith are writing political commentary now? For what magazine?

:hi:

(It's "Rolling Stone." No s)

Good post, otherwise.

.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. or..make it Rolling Stone's article...

[Starry Messenger]

3. There is some delightful imagery in that article.

Thank you for posting it. k&r

[DeepModem Mom]

4. K&R

[progressoid]

5. Pinochet in heels!

k/r

[Colobo]

6. The comparison is funny, but sadly inaccurate.

Palin is a bad joke. Pinochet was a mass murderer.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. I think the article meant it sarcastically

If you've ever seen the West Wing, there's a scene where they jokingly refer to Ainsley Hayes (the token Republican in the administration) as "Slightly to the right of the Kaiser". I think rolling stone meant more or less the same thing when they said "Pinochet in heels".

[sufrommich]

9. I also loved "crusading against germs" lol. nt

[L. Coyote]

10. Pinochet shot liberals in the head, Palin shoots animals for fun from helicopters.

There is a difference, unless you are trying to get away from her helicopter.
Then you are as doomed as a liberal in America's sphere of influence under Republicanism.

[Window]

7. K/R.

:kick:

[Bad Thoughts]

8. His Bipartisanship is a Myth

McCain didn't reach across the aisle--he walked across it when convenient. When working with Democrats, he bucked his fellow Republicans, generally failing to bring them across into the legislation being worked on. I am not surprised that core Republican voters were not endeared to him.

[wyldwolf]

11. though, in one part, completely untrue

McCain comes from the school of politicking that goes after as many votes as possible by waving a flag and saying as little as possible, which is to say he was basically a third-way Democrat with a Goldwater fetish.

Not only is this a slam on Hillary Clinton, it's also a slam on Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Max Cleland, Bob Graham, Joe Biden, Al Gore, and a host of others including (policy-wise) Barack Obama.

It isn't suprising that the circus clown Matt Taibbi can't write an honest article without taking digs at Democrats.

[Lautremont]

13. I'd say you couldn't write an honest article without taking digs at Democrats.

They're not infallible, you know.

[wyldwolf]

16. do you have an article of mine to compare it to?

No, Taibbi is a great pretender. Think David Sirota off his meds. In 2005, he wrote the utterly disgusting The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of the Pope. He was an editor of the Moscow-based eXile newspaper (think Jackass with a radical political perspective) where he once bragged about being immune to libel laws. In other words, he knows how to pull sophmoric stunts and write the revolution-ladened prose those on the far left like to read, but he’s hardly a reputable source or a responsible journalist and certainly not someone the left should desire as a spokesperson.

[sufrommich]

15. I like Matt Taibbi ,I don't always agree with him ,but he's one

of the better political commentators in my opinion.

[ClarkUSA]

14. On the contrary, we owe huge thanks to Team O (which incl. his loyal grassroots supporters)

Nobody gave Barack a chance when he declared on Jan. 2007 and now look who has had the last laugh on all of Obama's
asshole critics/opponents, past and present. Too bad these kind of "fun reading" articles never give credit where credit is
due: with the man and the much ridiculed (where's that last laugh again?) movement that made it all possible by believing
in the hope and promise of the change the American Dream could bring and working like hell to make it happen. Nothing
was handed to us. Little was expected of us. And we won despite the overwhelming odds, which opponents tried their
best to make worse. But they couldn't keep a great man down. In the end, voters knew a good thing after they saw the
same-old-slash-and-burn alternatives played out in the unforgiving glare of the modern political stage. So here we are,
with the world celebrating with us the triumph of HOPE over cynicism and CHANGE over the status quo.

:woohoo: Obama Is 44 :party:

[trof]

17. I KNEW that was Matt Taibbi before I clicked the link.

Nobody writes like that guy.
K&R

[Hutzpa]

18. My favorite part in the article;

You had a millionaire Yalie in an army jacket taking on a millionaire Yalie in a cowboy hat, fighting tooth and nail for the right to be named the man "middle America most wants to have a beer with" by a gang of Ivy League journalists — a group of people whose closest previous exposure to "middle America" was typically either an episode of Cops or a Von Dutch trucker hat they'd bought for $23 at Urban Outfitters.

Sums it all up about the state of Journalism in this country.

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. Great paragraph.

[blogslut]

20. Wow. Even Taibbi has a case of HOPE.

Who woulda thunk it?