Hey, did you guys hear? Sarah Palin said something dumb that was picked up by the “gotcha” media again!

I can remember hoping for more substance than sound bites and petty insults in this election, more talking about actual issues instead of transparent attempts at media manipulation. And I keep trying to rein in my under-informed liberal rage, reminding myself that these people are not idiots to be dismissed, but merely sometimes fallible adults with differing political views than mine. I genuinely, sincerely want there to be intelligent debate again, instead of increasingly polarized name-calling.

But the issues come down to one candidate whose economic, domestic, and foreign policies have been proven failures over the past eight years, and one candidate whose policies may or may not work but at least he’s genuinely committed to improving the country. And as much as it dismays me to fall in the “Economy and wars are boring! Let’s point and laugh at the funny pretty lady!” camp, I’ve got to acknowledge that it’s a pretty serious issue when your candidate for the second-highest office in the country doesn’t understand the United States Constitution.

I mean, come on:

“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

That’s right: she said that freedom of the press violates the First Amendment.

It was alarming enough when she revealed a basic misunderstanding of the role of vice president — not at that Q&A session that was quickly dismissed as “gotcha journalism,” but during the vice-presidential debate, where she ominously hinted at giving the role even more power than Cheney has given it.

But explaining how the First Amendment works is something that you have to do for stupid excitable people on internet message boards. You shouldn’t have to explain it to a candidate for Vice President of the United States.

Should the unthinkable happen, and she gets elected, are we going to have to explain everything to our VP? That the freedom of speech does not mean freedom from people pointing out that you’re saying stupid things? That the freedom of religion also guaranteed by the First Amendment means that even if the GOP weren’t blatantly manipulating suspicions about Obama’s religious faith, that that still wouldn’t bar him from office? That when she types MAVERICK in all caps it comes across as shouting? That it’s improper to mix up your official and personal e-mails — oh, wait. I’m sure she’d have no problem recognizing the ;) smiley, but will we have to explain that ad hominem attacks are lousy for debates, and that RTFC stands for Read the Fucking Constitution?

I can’t imagine what other basic internet truths the conservatives could manage to screw up, maybe Godwin’s L… wait, hang on, what’s this article in the New York Times all about:

On one, polls that are “tightening” are emphasized over those that are not, and the rest of the news media is portrayed as papering over questions about Mr. Obama’s past associations with people who have purportedly anti-American tendencies that he has not answered. (“I feel like we are talking to the Germans after Hitler comes to power, saying, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t know,’ ” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, told Mr. Hannity on Thursday.)

Ah, there we go. Don’t ever change, Ms. Coulter.

On the one hand, I want to believe that this country is founded on cooperation and the fair and just resolution of conflicts, and that only by working together as mutually respectful adults can we accomplish anything. But on the other hand, I think that after all this, anyone who would vote for a McCain/Palin ticket has to be a fucking moron. I’m having trouble reconciling these disparate philosophies.

In the meantime, my advice for Governor Palin: lurk more.

Over the past couple of days, there’s been a good bit of attention towards the change in tone of the presidential campaign, more specifically, the McCain campaign. “McCain Denounces Pitchfork-Wavers”, announces the Time Magazine blog. And “Obama Thanks McCain for Admonishing Reporters”.

The incident in question is a campaign rally in which McCain told his supporters to “be respectful” of Obama, reassuring one man that Obama is nothing to be “afraid” of, and correcting one woman who described Obama as an “Arab.” The shift is being described as the McCain campaign’s backing off from fear-mongering and personal attacks; even Palin has been reined in and is now just calling Obama a baby-killer. Even the most cynical sources are describing it as a good gesture, but performed too late; “McCain Tries to Tame Flames He Earlier Fanned.” My reaction was the same, “thank God; maybe we’re pulling back from the brink, although they shouldn’t have taken it that far in the first place.” (Once again: this is the campaign that compared their opponent to the Antichrist).

So I was surprised that of all the reports on the rally I’ve seen, only one article, in the New York Times mentions this:

But moments later, Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, renewed his attacks on Mr. Obama for his association with the 1960s radical William Ayers and told the crowd, “Mr. Obama’s political career was launched in Mr. Ayers’ living room.”

Which is odd, because the supposed “connection” to Ayers was already beaten out and invalidated long ago, and the only value it had to the Republican side of the campaign was that they could call Ayers a “terrorist.” Take advantage of the fact that people don’t read past headlines, and you can link “terrorist” and “Muslim” with your “Country First!” slogan, and plant the idea that the first step of Obama’s administration would be to bomb the Pentagon.

I want to believe that McCain’s admonishing the crowd was sincere, if only for this reason: when a woman said “He’s an Arab,” McCain replied with, “No, no ma’am, he’s a good man. A family man.” A gaffe like that would never be pre-scripted. That would indicate it was a case of the old McCain — excuse me, the earlier McCain, the one who said he wouldn’t allow a smear campaign — reasserting himself after seeing first-hand the depths his campaign had reached.

That’s the best case scenario, and it’s still not good. Because it indicates it’s not his campaign, assuming it ever was. He’s trying the underhanded guilt-by-association tactics of Joseph McCarthy, and the say-whatever-I’m-told-to-say tactics of Charlie McCarthy. When Palin goes on the offensive with whatever crap she’s expected to dredge up, you have to feel a little bit of sympathy for her, because she’s an idiot. (I so wanted to believe that she was more than the vapid moron the press was making her out to be, and she repeatedly proved me wrong). A senator with McCain’s experience shouldn’t be parroting back whatever the party tells him to say.

The worse case would be that it’s completely insincere, just another tactic to convince undecided voters that they’re not evil, even as they’ve got their hand in the Big Cookie Jar of Evil, grabbing another Evil Cookie after we’ve already told them not to spoil their Evil Dinner.

I suppose the only thing worse than that would be that they’re completely sincere, and they really believe there’s something to the Ayers connection, and it’s not just code language for “Guys, he’s black and his middle name is Hussein! Are you blind?!?”

Holy crap, that’s the scariest thing of all. What if they really do believe everything that they’re saying? Their catch phrase is “Who is Barack Obama?” What if that’s not just an attempt at McCarthy-esque fear-mongering, but they really don’t know?

I’d feel better if they were just plain evil, than that stupid. “Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice.” Luckily, there’s a lot more evidence of evil: in that New York Times article, McCain’s campaign manager and aides once again reveal themselves to be The Worst Living Americans. John McCain is at his core an honorable man, and it’d be hypocrisy to demonize him just as the GOP has tried to demonize all opposition for years. But seriously, I want to do everything I can to make this an internet meme: Rick Davis and Nicolle Wallace are The Worst Living Americans. They are irredeemably evil, and they should never be allowed to work on anything ever again.

Great video from The Jed Report blog, where Obama predicts the McCain/Palin smear campaign.

It’s downright calming if you’re like me, and you’ve been watching both the far-left and far-right get increasingly hysterical, and getting worried that we’ll never be able to climb our way out of this nonsense.

(Link from David Eggers, no, not that one).

The worst thing about you liberals (if I have to pick just one) is the way you’re commandeering our language. With your political correctness, you appropriate words to suit your own political purpose, instead of just saying what they really mean. What happened to using words as they’re supposed to be used, instead of trying to redefine them? Good, solid, American words: Patriot. Maverick. Eltist. Liberal. Madrassa. Folks. Nuclear. Pakistan.

Now there’s all this hullaballoo about John McCain calling Barack Obama “that one” during the presidential debate. What is with you people, thinking that there was something dismissive or disrespectful about that? McCain was just straight-talking, telling it like it is. There were like a million people in that room, and he had to make sure you knew he was talking about Senator Obama, and not one of the other candidates for President.

This is yet another example of the Democrat party running “the fussiest campaign in American history”. In a moment of national crisis, where the economy is on the minds [sic] of every single person, the liberals are trying to make this a campaign about race.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are focused on one thing and one thing only: making this the most specific presidential race possible.

Instead of tackling the issues, the liberals are taking quotes out of context, mocking people’s religious beliefs, and trying to manipulate language.

The Republican Party is having none of that. No vague fear, no uncertainty, no mistrust; just hard, straight, and brutally specific talk. They’re not campaigning against any Barack Obama, it’s Barack Hussein Obama. That’s the kind of honesty, integrity, and specificity I can believe in.

So what if John McCain called a three-million dollar planetarium projector an “overhead projector.” The man’s 72 years old! He’s still getting used to not calling the TV remote a “clicker” and CDs “tapes.” If you liberals are mocking him for his age, your hearts must be as cold as my icebox. How dishonorable. Everybody knew what he was really saying.

(P.S. Sometimes I look back on stuff I’ve written on this blog and just laugh at how naive I was. “Finally an American presidential race that isn’t racist or sexist!” What a dumb-ass!)

According to a report from Reuters (bolding mine):

“There is a time when it’s necessary to take the gloves off and that time is right now,” Palin told thousands of supporters at a rally in a sports arena in Carson, California.

Earlier at a fundraiser in Englewood, Colorado, she departed from her usual speech to question Obama’s character.

“Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.

Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam War-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

I’m now deeply regretting what I said earlier about Palin’s not being an idiot.

She should’ve stuck with the stereotype of the backwoods former newscaster who got in way over her head. Since the GOP is betraying its own supporters, rotting out the core of its platform in favor of Fox News-worthy talking points, you could feel some small degree of sympathy for her getting swept into that betrayal. And getting turned into a hot by horny conservative standards* mannequin parroting back the inflammatory nonsense the party orders her to.

But you have to be a special kind of idiot to be spreading crap like that. If she is actually “departing” from her usual speech, then she’s an idiot for believing that will fly. And if she’s not, but merely tossing in another attempt at muckraking her GOP handlers have given her to say, then she’s an idiot for not saying “I’m enough of a maverick to rattle off your prepared statements when they’re vague meaningless sound bites and empty promises, but not when it’s perpetuating a baseless smear, bless your hearts.”

This is the material of cowardly forwarded e-mails filled with the kind of stuff the GOP wants you to think, but they’re not allowed to say out loud. (“Hasn’t everyone noticed how he’s black? And his middle name is Hussein? How can we possibly be losing?!? Put our redneck uncertainty staff on full alert: give us everything you can to link him with Muslim extremists, stat!”) When somebody forwards you one of those e-mails, it’s kind of hard to get too angry, because they’re just gullible saps who’ve been horribly manipulated. But the person who writes the e-mail in the first place deserves your full scorn.

I think Governor Palin was better off just being an embarrassment.

* When considering the concept of “hot by horny conservative standards,” you have to remember that the desiccated husk that is Ann Coulter got all the attention she has by marketing herself as a “hot conservative,” and mysteriously, it worked.