Sarah Palin's disastrous candidacy must be stopped.

Snowmobile Wreck

Sarah Palin's disastrous candidacy must be stopped.

By Conor Friedersdorf,  September 30, 2008

Pundits once imagined that George W. Bush and his political architect, Karl Rove, would preside over a permanent conservative realignment. Excepting the ascension of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, however, the most important conservative victories of the last 8 years have been won at the expense of the Bush Administration.

Perhaps most important was the grassroots defeat of a guest worker program. Its passage would've irrevocably severed the tie between residency and citizenship in the United States, institutionalizing a second class of non-citizens and permanently jeopardizing the civic assimilation of immigrants and their children. Conservative elites were divided on the immigration bill. But those same elites are owed credit for the second most important conservative victory of the Bush years: the defeat of the Harriet Miers nomination.

Thanks to Ivy League educated conservatives like Laura Ingraham, rich celebrity entertainers like Rush Limbaugh, and especially thanks to principled conservative intellectuals like George Will, America now has a Supreme Court Justice possessed of the intellectual heft to defend federalism for the rest of his lifetime appointment. By enabling the revolt against Miers, these elites also helped rank and file conservatives avoid defending an intellectually bankrupt position. As George Will wrote:
Such is the perfect perversity of the nomination of Harriet Miers that it discredits, and even degrades, all who toil at justifying it. Many of their justifications cannot be dignified as arguments. Of those that can be, some reveal a deficit of constitutional understanding commensurate with that which it is, unfortunately, reasonable to impute to Miers. Other arguments betray a gross misunderstanding of conservatism on the part of persons masquerading as its defenders. The most striking thing about reading those lines now is that they apply almost perfectly to another Republican nominated for reasons other than her qualifications: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a candidate who asserts that proximity to Russia is itself foreign policy experience, whose supposed aversion to pork barrel spending is at best inconsistent, and who cannot even reliably state the approximate share of American energy that comes from Alaska, despite claiming energy policy as her particular area of expertise.
So long as she remains on the ticket, her candidacy dooms GOP partisans to the full-throated defense of an unqualified candidate. Should it succeed, the United States risks giving the reins of government to an incurious neophyte who apparently lacks the intellectual agility to face down Katie Couric, never mind a head-rearing Vladamir Putin or a potential economic catastrophe.

John McCain has stuck principled conservatives with an awful choice: ratify a reckless, irresponsible VP pick or else enable the election of a relatively inexperienced liberal senator to the presidency. Some on the right are already dividing along both sides of that line. A great many others, however, find neither option palatable. It is they who should demand, without delay, the only event that can save them from shame and the nation from unnecessary risk: the immediate replacement of Sarah Palin with a person more fit for the presidency.

The conventional wisdom is that only withdrawal by Governor Palin can produce that outcome. Kathleen Parker puts it most powerfully in National Review:
McCain can't repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP's unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.
I'd rather that Governor Palin withdraw than stay on the ticket, but it is no slur against her if she, like most smart, ambitious people, lacks the perspective to assess her present limitations. Nor is it possible for John McCain to hide the fact that his VP pick, by now a Saturday Night Live laughingstock, reflects poorly on his judgment. Refusing to fess up to a mistake doesn't make it go away.


What's more likely is that as Governor Palin's reputation and approval ratings continue their rapid decline in coming weeks, independent voters will think of all the George W. Bush appointees who turned out, under even the most cursory scrutiny, to be unfit for their positions, and wonder whether America can afford another president whose idea of leadership is stubbornly clinging to his mistakes rather than acknowledging them, righting course and sailing on.

It is telling that the most formidable objection to replacing Governor Palin isn't a substantive one, but rather the worry that the conservative base would revolt. Would they? Those conservatives who prefer fealty to the principles of the founders, a preference for small government, an appreciation of competence and a tempermental aversion to rapid, risky change would thrill at her replacement -- so long as she is replaced by a conservative -- because her rapid expulsion from the ticket is the only way to avert the great risk that she might preside over our government.

Perhaps those who fear a conservative revolt respect the base less than I do, imagining that it is mostly composed of people who confuse the admirable decision to birth a Down Syndrome baby with wisdom in matters of public policy, or who regard moose meat as so much more American than arugula as to select their presidential ticket based on cultural cues. It is true, of course, that some folks like this exist.

In Barack Obama's formulation, these voters make their decisions based on bitterness rather than principles. But I suspect that even many whose votes are informed by cultural cues -- and who supported Palin because of them -- are open to persuasion. They'll listen to conservative opinion-makers whose bonafides they regard as beyond question. It is these elites who need to make the case that Palin's replacement is best for the movement.

Thus I call on conservative elites to repudiate the Palin candidacy without delay, for the sake of your intellectual tradition and your country. Forcefully argue to your audiences that good values are a necessary but insufficient qualification for a capable executive. Tell them that even those who think Sarah Palin is more experienced than Barack Obama can acknowledge that is no great hurdle, and that the GOP has an opportunity to significantly improve the qualifications of the team that may enter the White House this January, never mind what the Democrats are doing.

Mr. Limbaugh, you can do the most to close the gap between elite conservative opinion and the base. Tell your listeners that John McCain should be forgiven the mistake of Sarah Palin and given a mulligan--having enabled the Bush Administration's excesses with your cover, waiting until 2006 to adequately acknowledge the unconservatism of its tenure, you owe it to the movement more than most.

Less influential but more motivated by honest adherence to principles is the incomparable Mr. Will, who is either almost ready to repudiate Palin or not voting for John McCain anway, and the estimable Ms. Noonan, who is delicate in her public criticism, though I'd wager $100 that she'd switch out Palin for the good of the country were it up to her. David Frum, conveniently traveling on another continent, should phone in his column calling for a new VP pick. Unanimity is impossible, Sean Hannity being unlikely to channel Andrew Sullivan on this one. Perhaps, however, David Brooks can be convinced to join the reclamation project, not to mention all his heterodox young conservatives.

Would John McCain's campaign replace Sarah Plain if all those conservative voices forcefully stated that preference? Can conservatism survive as an intellectually viable political movement if its adherents privilege the electoral chances of the GOP above averting the instalation of an unkown and by all outward appearances woefully unqualified person in the White House?

Never again should a Western governor of questionable competence win over conservatives with nothing more than promises of tax cuts, religious faith, and the empty claim of an outsider's perspective. These faulty litmus tests, no harbingers of competent conservative governance, ought to be replaced by a preference for relevant experience, demonstrated competence, and an ability to articulate and defend conservative principles.

Governor Palin, bereft of these qualities at this early stage of her career, should be sent back to Alaska. May she remain there until she possesses them, at which time I'll welcome her return.