Just as the anti-black coalition that marches under the banner of the GOP championed Thomas in 1991, so now will that same breed of Republican boost Palin.
That’s not only unwise but dangerous: the world according to Palin is flat; the sun no doubt revolves around the Earth; God created the planet in seven 24-hour days; and Darwin is a monkey lover.
Compared with Palin, George W. Bush, the finest 19th-century mind ever to occupy the White House, is an unrestrained freethinker. While the world progresses uneasily into the 21st century, John McCain has proposed to lead America into a storybook past. Call it the Little House on the Arctic Prairie.
The headline that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant out of wedlock has recently created a stir. But that flurry is nothing like the furor that surrounded Thomas, who was accused of all sorts of louche sexual behavior.
No one need stoop to the politics of personal destruction to question Palin’s suitability to sit, as the cliché has it, one heartbeat away from the presidency. As it was with Thomas, all one needs to know about Palin is right there on the sketchy public record: she is a right-wing nut, but very serious in her nuttiness. That she’s this close to such a position of power is frightening.
McCain’s choice of Palin is a concrete indication of what a dangerous president he would be.
