McCAIN'S REVENGE

Dear Readers,

Excerpts from the Sarah Palin book, Going Rouge are beginning to appear, and it looks like the man who pulled her from well-deserved obscurity is not going to come out of too well. Yes, not only are we going to be treated to a no-holds barred re-writing of the would-be Veep's disastrous 2008 campaign, but poor old John McCain will be savaged by his very own creation.

I suppose it will not only become a best-seller, trash McCain and his handlers and offer us the wit and wisdom of the moose-slaughtering, ex-governor of Alaska, but it will probably be regarded as the first serious stirrings of the 2012 presidential campaign. The very notion that Sarah would be taken seriously by anyone as a US president is offset by the sheer exasperation many Americans seem to have for Mr. Obama, perhaps our brainiest chief executive. But a quick think about the motives of the Republican Party - i.e., get the controls of government again - and you begin to see the sense of promoting Palin as the saviour of the country. The neocons have a long track record of getting 'amiable dunces' elected to the White House - just examine the list of the last 30 years or so. If you think that there's no way a half-wit could ever get his or her feet under the desk in the Oval Office, think again. You have to admire the skills of the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, and Roves of the GOP, as they've been at or near the heart of the machines that saw Ronald Reagan and a couple of George Bushes (easily the dimmest dynastic family since the Windsors) win election to the highest office in the land. The Democrats, on the other hand, have gotten extremely smart people elected in the last 30 years - Jimmy Carter (nuclear peanut baron), Bill Clinton (Rhodes scholar) and Barack Obama (earned a degree from Harvard in 6 weeks) - yet it's the Republican double-digit IQ candidates that people are beginning to look back at fondly - in spite of the fact that a fair-minded assessment of the records would have to conclude these GOP presidents have collectively wreaked the most damage on ordinary citizens.

So Palin puts out Going Rouge (I know it's really called 'Going Rogue', but let me have my little joke) and the cycle starts again. In the film Frankenstein, the torch-carrying mob corners and seems to kill the monster Victor Frankenstein has created, but it's looking like in real life, the mob wishes the monster to live, and instead, turns on itself. Meanwhile, back in the gloomy, gothic laboratory, the mad scientists of the GOP nudge and wink at each other, thinking "it's alive, it's alive"!!