“We have to defend our brand against poseurs,” said Steinhauser.

[…]

“If we can’t make any distinction between any of the candidates, if we’re just going to provide cover for the establishment candidates, then what is the point of having the tea party?” Steinhauser said. “We’ve got to have a brand, and we can’t water down our brand.”

He’s got a good point: any association between the Tea Party and Mitt Romney could bring down the entire grassroots façade. I just can’t believe that an establishment manufactured anti-establishment movement would even dare bring up the words “brand” and “poseur” in their defense. That’s bad brand management.

The dedication to fiscal responsibility is upheld by their full-throated support for extending the Bush tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, without worrying about covering the roughly $700 billion cost.

The dedication to freedom/liberty is exemplified by incidents like what went down at a town hall-style event for Alaskan Senate candidate Joe Miller last night. Short version: a reporter was handcuffed by Joe Miller’s private security guards.

A private security guard and a reporter from the Alaska Dispatch offered contradictory accounts of what led to the reporter being handcuffed at a town hall-style event for Senate candidate Joe Miller in Anchorage Sunday night.

The reporter, Tony Hopfinger, said he was trying to ask Miller whether the candidate had ever gotten in trouble for politicking while working for the Fairbanks North Star Borough in 2008.

At that point, private security guards hired by the Miller campaign bumped their chests into him and tried to prevent him for asking any more questions, Hopfinger said.

The guards eventually pushed him against a wall and put him in handcuffs, he said.

“It was like a car accident and I had to ask, ‘How did this happen so quick? Why am I in handcuffs,’” Hopfinger said.

The Miller campaign released a statement from William Fulton, the security guard who apprehended Hopfinger.

“The Dispatch reporter repeatedly pushed a camera into the face of Mr. Miller. He continued to aggressively pursue him. I told the reporter several times that he needed to stop and that he was trespassing. He ignored me. He then proceeded to stalk Mr. Miller and even shoved an individual into a locker. Based upon this trespass and his assault, we detained him and escorted him from the premises,” the statement read.

Hopfinger told CNN he did push the security guard after he said he was pushed.

Police responded to the incident and removed Hopfinger’s handcuffs.

Lt. Dave Parker of Anchorage Police said the department is investigating the incident and will turn over their findings to the local prosecutor.

Parker said private security guards in Alaska can make “private person arrests,” much like a citizen’s arrest.

Hopfinger said he is still in disbelief over what happened.

“Joe Miller wants to be a U.S. Senator and he is going to have it a hell of a lot tougher with journalists in the beltway than he is with local media,” Hopfinger said. “I was just doing my job.”

Tony Hopfinger, incidentally, is the founder and editor of the Alaska Dispatch. CNN might have bothered to say so. Also, the event was held at a public school. In other words, it was a public event on public property, which makes the trespassing charge ludicrous. That’s another detail that CNN didn’t think its readers deserve to know.

Those allegations of “politicking while working for the Fairbanks North Star Borough in 2008″, incidentally, are a sore point with Joe Miller.

Last week, U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller called a press conference to talk about how his employment as an attorney at the Fairbanks North Star Borough ended. Then he canceled the press conference, saying he’d talk to reporters after a debate with his opponents before the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce.

When he talked to reporters, he said he wouldn’t be answering any more questions about his background — personal or professional.

As far as we know, reporters and Alaskans in general haven’t shown much interest in his personal life, with the possible exception of his legally required financial disclosures. Most questions have focused on his conduct of public duties.

He’s been asked about the circumstances of his departure from borough employment, including his alleged use of borough time and equipment in his political campaign to unseat Republican Party chairman Randy Ruedrich in 2008, and the hiring of his wife while serving as a federal magistrate.
[...]
It is telling that former borough mayor and state legislator Jim Whitaker decided he needed to tell what he knows of Miller’s departure from borough service. Whitaker has a well-earned reputation as a straight shooter. He preferred to stay out of this business, he said, but when Miller decided to clam up, he decided to speak up.

As Whitaker tells it, Miller has misled the public by omitting details from his professional biography. Whitaker said Miller got in trouble for ethics violations by using borough time and computers in the bid to oust Ruedrich. He said Miller was reprimanded, and that it was his understanding that Miller was about to be fired by the borough attorney when he resigned in 2009.

At some point, it may occur to Joe Miller that if he wants to kill this story, manhandling reporters like this is the wrong way to go about it. Or maybe not. Maybe Joe Miller is just not smart enough or is too hubris-blinded to see that.

In any case, whether Joe Miller likes it or not, he’s now going to be getting a lot more questions from journalists about “how his employment as an attorney at the Fairbanks North Star Borough ended”. Some of those journalists might even be inspired to try and push Joe Miller and/or his security goons over the edge again. Stand by to see how Miller and Miller’s handle the spotlight this week.

 
*** Update, 9:33 a.m. ***

I flagged a couple of errors and omissions by CNN in the post. Here, apparently, is another one: “The Miller campaign released a statement from William Fulton, the security guard who apprehended Hopfinger.”

The Anchorage Daily News doesn’t seem to agree:

Hopfinger has not been charged but the owner of the Drop Zone, the private security firm that’s been providing Miller’s security, accused Hopfinger of trespassing at the public event, a town hall sponsored by the Miller campaign. The owner, William Fulton, also said Hopfinger assaulted a man by shoving him.

The Anchorage Daily News also offers addition details about freedom of the press as it is practiced by Tea Party security goons:

While Hopfinger was still in handcuffs, the guards attempted to prevent other reporters from talking to him and threatened them too with arrest for trespass. A Daily News reporter interviewed Hopfinger anyway. No other reporters were arrested, though a few shoving matches and chest bumps ensued as the guards attempted to cordon off Hopfinger and block photographs and videos from being taken of the bizarre school scene.

The Miller campaign, doesn’t seem to have realized yet that a) it has anything to apologize for, and b) given that the whole incident was witnessed by other journalists, who were themselves subjected to goonery, there’s not much future in belligerent spin:

The Miller campaign released a written one-paragraph statement from Fuller, then followed with a statement titled, “Liberal Blogger ‘Loses It’ at Town Hall Meeting.” In that statement, Miller accused Hopfinger of assaulting someone and of taking advantage of the meeting to “create a publicity stunt.”

He said his personal security detail had to take action to detain “the irrational blogger.”

You have to admit, though, that it was a really well-planned and well-executed publicity stunt. Complete with a bevy of other irrational journalists on hand to perversely insist on interviewing and photographing the irrational blogger. To the point that Miller’s personal security detail had to take action to impede these other irrational journalists too.

Let’s pick, pretty much at random, four of this year’s crop of truly lunatic Republican Senate candidates. And let’s look at how likely they are to be making a complete fool of themselves on Capitol Hill for the next six years. (Full disclosure of working assumption: for each of them, the probability of making a complete fool of themselves on Capitol Hill, conditional on being elected, is assumed to be 100%.)

Here, in alphabetical order, is the starting four: Sharron Angle (Nevada), Ken Buck (Colorado), Joe Miller (Alaska), Rand Paul (Kentucky).

Nate Silver had this assessment of Sharron Angle’s prospects yesterday:

In Nevada, two of three polls released this week show the Democrat, Harry Reid, with a slight lead over the Republican, Sharron Angle. The model still regards Ms. Angle as an incremental favorite — but it now sees the race as closer to 50-50 after having assigned her a two-in-three chance of winning last week.

“Closer to 50-50″ actually means a 56% probability that Angle wins.

Last week, Public Policy Polling had Ken Buck locked in a neck-and-neck contest that seems to be a lesser-of-the-two-evils race:

PPP’s newest Colorado poll finds (Michael Bennet) holding onto a 46-45 lead over Ken Buck.
[...]
Bennet continues to be, as we’ve found in all of our polling for the whole cycle, an unpopular Senator. His approval rating is just 35% and 49% of voters disapprove of the job he’s doing. If a moderate Republican had been nominated against him this race might be over. But Buck’s unpopular too at a 41/46 favorability spread and that’s keeping this race close.

Nate Silver — who is well known to walk on water — is, once again, not too impressed with the Democrat’s chances, though:

One survey, from Public Policy Polling, in fact gives Mr. Bennet a single-point lead (Mr. Bennet’s internal polling, not used by the model, also puts him slightly ahead). But the bulk of the evidence still suggests an advantage for the Republican, Ken Buck; the model has him as the 73 percent favorite, down from 79 percent last week.

That 73% was last week; Silver now has that probability at 68%.

In the three-way Alaska race, a Public Policy Polling poll for Daily Kos this week shows Joe Miller at 35%, with renegade write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski at 33% and Democrat Scott McAdams at 26%.

This is Nate Silver’s two-week-old assessment, based on complex adjustments to account for the fact that “polls evaluating Senator Lisa Murkowski’s chances as a write-in may be unreliable”:

Right now, it is not clear if Ms. Murkowski or Mr. Miller would be favored if she were named on the ballot — the polls, in addition to other issues, are of mixed opinion on this question. But if the penalty that Ms. Murkowski suffers for being a write-in is at all substantial, that would make Mr. Miller a reasonably clear favorite — and our model thus gives him an 85 percent chance of winning, versus 12 percent for Ms. Murkowski and 3 percent for Mr. McAdams.

He currently assigns a 74% probability to Miller winning.

A recent independent poll has Rand Paul leading Jack Conway by four points:

Ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R) is running virtually even with state Attorney General Jack Conway (D) in the Kentucky Senate race, according to a new independent poll.

The survey shows Paul taking 43.4 percent to Conway’s 39.5 percent among likely voters. Seventeen percent were undecided in the survey, which had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Nate Silver doesn’t seem to have a recent post assessing the Kentucky Senate race (not that I could find, anyway), but the probability he assigns to Rand Paul winning the race is currently 86%.

Time to step back, and heave a deep sigh. Not one of these crazies is a clear underdog by the polls. Not one of them has less than a 56% probability of winning, according to Nate Silver.

We can go ahead and have a little more fun with these very unfunny numbers. Let’s assume Nate Silver’s probability estimates are independent. That is to say, the estimation errors in his probability estimates are independent. (Of course, that can’t be strictly true, to the extent that there are common assumptions in the forecast models for these four states. But it’s the only way to do combined number-crunching with the estimates.)

The probability that at least one of these crazies will be elected to the Senate is a sobering 99%. The probability that all of them will be elected is an extremely uncomfortable 24%.

Rand Paul knows fully well that spending ourselves into oblivion and having a massive debt leads to the kind of economic chaos that leads to the destruction of our currency and the emergence of Hitlers.

This is a thesis dear to his heart. One he has expounded upon many times.

And despite this knowledge, Rand Paul is determined to cut taxes for the very very rich, adding hundreds of billions to the massive debt, hastening us down the road to currency destruction, and to Hitler emergence.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul said he would vote to extend federal tax cuts even without proposed spending cuts, a move that would dramatically deepen a federal debt he has railed against.

Paul, who has built his campaign around opposing big government and a $13.4 trillion national debt, said it would be better to pair the tax cuts with a plan to reduce spending.

However, asked if he would vote to extend the tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts, Paul said, “Absolutely. The money is not the government’s. It is ours.”

Note that the other Republicans, and the misguided Democrats, who are rooting for tax-cuts-for-millionaires cannot be said to be rooting for Hitler. Because they, in their innocence, are unaware of the terrible causality that Dr. Paul knows so well.

But the Paul knows fully well what the inevitable consequences of his actions are. And he still absolutely wants to add hundreds of billions to our massive debt.

It’s less clear what it means that the promoters/exploiters of the movement are apparently no longer able to successfully arrange large political gatherings of Tea-Partiers who are willing to fork over big bucks to attend.

Back in June we learned that the much hyped Tea Party Unity convention was being canceled and rescheduled to October 14-16 in Las Vegas. This barely registered a blip with the media at the time …

We’re about a month out from their new announced date, and I thought I’d check them out and see how things were coming along.

Well my first stop was a Google search to find their web site. I found it, but this link should speak for itself. Check out nationalteapartyconvention.com. Oh you got a page not found error? Well there’s nothing wrong with your browser, the site doesn’t exist any more. And there’s absolutely zero media or blog coverage of the event since they announced the dates were changing. Not really what you’d expect for an event featuring Sharron Angle, Lou Dobbs, Joseph Farah, and Andrew Breitbart is it?

Well it gets better. I wanted to make sure the convention really was canceled and they weren’t just having web issues or neglected to do any PR for their event. So I put in a call to the Mirage hotel and asked if I could book a room in their block for the event. Turns out the room block had been canceled and the Mirage had no record of the event.

So there you have it, the much hyped Tea Party Unity Convention is now completely canceled. Maybe they shouldn’t have paid Sarah Palin $100,000 to keynote the first event and they might have had a little more staying power financially.

The traditional press is still obsessed with writing about the Tea Party and the power they hold. And yes in the most recent primary elections their candidates did prevail. But those wins have also put races back on the board the Democrats weren’t counting on winning. This cancellation shows that they have zero grassroots strength. It’s GOP operatives and big money that control everything, it’s not some sort of bottom up effort lead by real people and supported by the conservative community.

I’m not sure if the Tea Party Nation’s convention falling apart denotes zero grassroots strength, or just the drying up of the Tea-Party-hucksterism market.

The last time around, when the Tea Party Nation organized its first national event in Nashville in February, attendees forked out $549 to attend or $349 just for Sarah Palin’s speech. Attendance, evidently, fell short of organizers’ expectations.

This time, the Unity Convention was offering three different alternatives to Tea Partiers looking to be parted from their money:

Full Convention Registration (3 days) – $399
Saturday Only Convention Registration – $175
Traditional American Concert & Symposium – $99

Registrations, presumably, were underwhelming.

So here’s the one I want to ask: in this primary season of Tea Party Davids repeatedly toppling Republican establishment Goliaths — often, as last night, by huge non-contest margins — how on earth did John McCain manage to escape the fate he oh-so-richly deserved?

I think before last night, if you asked this question, a pretty glib answer could be constructed arguing that J.D. Hayworth did too well in the polls too early. McCain saw him coming a long way off, realized that his seat might be in danger, and spent all kinds of money mounting a concerted, determined campaign to fight him off. And Hayworth, through that infamous infomercial, certainly gave McCain ample ammunition to attack him with.

But Mike Castle and the Republican establishment weren’t exactly blind-sided by Christine “masturbation equals adultery” O’Donnell. They saw her coming a long way off, too. And fought her tooth and nail.

The GOP establishment and its preferred candidate saw this coming weeks ago, and acted quickly to prevent a disaster, attacking O’Donnell, dishing dirt to reporters, and even filing an FEC complaint against her.
[...]
The chairman of the Delaware Republican Party characterized his party’s U.S. Senate nominee as “a perennial candidate unworthy of being elected dog catcher.” Even Dick Armey‘s FreedomWorks, which rallies behind right-wing fringe candidates, wanted nothing to do with her.

So how did McCain manage to escape his karma? There must be a special god who watches over totally unprincipled hypocrites.

For a few weeks now, it has been looking increasingly likely that Florida governor Charlie Crist will pull out of the Republican Senate primary to run as an independent. This makes sense, because polls show him getting creamed by right-wing challenger and darling of the Tea Partiers, Marco Rubio in the primary, but he might actually win a three-way election.

A poll released Thursday suggests Gov. Charlie Crist’s political career is not over — if he abandons his Republican bid for the U.S. Senate and runs as an independent.

Former House Speaker Marco Rubio has soared 23 points ahead of Crist in a Republican matchup, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. But Crist keeps his head above water as an independent candidate against Rubio as the GOP nominee and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami as the Democratic standard bearer.

The governor would get 32 percent of the vote, compared to Rubio’s 30 percent and Meek’s 24 percent, the survey found.

The politically moderate governor has repeatedly dismissed the idea of leaving the Republican Party. But his bleak performance in the polls, combined with increasing hostility from members of his own party, may leave him with little choice.

So the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has offered him some advice on the proper political etiquette to be followed in the peculiar circumstances Crist finds himself in:

The top political strategist for Senate Republicans urged key GOP consultants Monday to persuade Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to forgo an independent bid for Senate if he withdraws from the Republican primary, CNN has learned.

Rob Jesmer, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an e-mail to national political operatives just before noon in which he also predicted that Crist will decide not to compete in the GOP primary against former state House Speaker Marco Rubio.

“We believe there is zero chance Governor Crist continues running in the Republican primary,” Jesmer wrote in the e-mail provided to CNN by a Republican source on the condition of anonymity. “It [is] our view that if Governor Crist believes he cannot win a primary then the proper course of action is he drop out of the race and wait for another day.”

In case you’re confused, Crist is still the official candidate of the Republican Party establishment. He is still the one endorsed by the NRSC. But Republican politics isn’t what it used to be; which is why “Jesmer emphasized in his note that the Senate Republican political arm is ready to stand behind Rubio’s candidacy.” Or why John Cornyn, chairman of the NRSC, has been making similar threats :

Cornyn said that Crist would be a “man without a party” if he decided to mount a three-way race against Rubio and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek, who is pursuing his party’s nomination in the state.

“And I think he’s got other potential and aspirations, so I think from that standpoint, it would be a bad decision,” Cornyn said.

Asked if that meant the NRSC would work to defeat Crist, Cornyn warned: “Our job is to elect Republicans so that’s what we’ll do – and I don’t care who it is.”

What I’m really curious about is: when Republican Party operatives try to offer Crist advice, what do they think they’re appealing to? At this point, what can they appeal to?

This is a guy who has been abandoned by his party because They-Who-Must-be-Obeyed have a hard-on for Rubio. Trying to invoke party loyalty seems grotesque even for today’s Republican Party. And they can’t seriously expect him to buy the notion that a grateful party will reward him down the road even though they have to abandon him now.

Leave aside the notion that there is absolutely nothing in the recent history of the Republican Party to make that an even remotely credible promise. The simple fact of the matter is that if Crist quietly steps aside and doesn’t run as an independent — that is to say, if he quietly steps aside in favor of Rubio — then any Republican primary he ever runs in again will attract exactly the same kind of challenge from the right, which will be supported by the same group of people with the same fervor that Rubio’s candidacy has attracted.

In short, unless the Republican Party unexpectedly lurches back toward the center, Crist simply has no future in Republican politics in the foreseeable future. And the number of people who believe there is any chance of an unexpected lurch toward the center is exactly zero, which includes all the guys who are paid large amounts of money by the purveyors of TV news to be outrageously but colorfully wrong about such things (see “punditry”).

So the Republican Party is reduced to trying to persuade Crist that he should refrain from doing the only thing he can possibly do if he wants to continue in politics.

Rob Jesmer is described as the top political strategist for Senate Republicans. We don’t even need to remind ourselves that being sensible or smart, or having the ability to be right about anything, has never been a requirement for being a top political strategist in the Republican Party — I don’t know who you’re thinking of, as you read that; I’m thinking of Karl Rove, whose only real talent consists of being able to make spectacularly false statements with great confidence — because Jesmer’s words do a perfectly adequate job of reminding us of that. This clown evidently believes that, at this point, “key GOP consultants” have some kind of leverage with Crist for some reason.

(2)

This was Crist’s official and very public response to Jesmer:

Although Crist has previously said he intends to run as a Republican, he struck a different note in a Monday television interview.

Asked whether he was considering an independent bid, Crist opened the door to the idea.

“I’m getting a lot of advice in that direction,” Crist said in an interview with WFTS. “And so, I’m a listener. I’m certainly listening to it.”

Earlier in the day, a top Republican campaign official predicted that Crist would not run in the GOP primary.

His strongest statement to date about the possibility of running as an independent.

The NYT made this the lede of their “Crist’s reaction” story.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, facing pressure from fellow Republicans to abandon his Senate campaign, said Monday that he would not allow party leaders in Washington to push him from the race and declared that he was considering running for the seat as an independent.

They don’t actually provide any direct quotes, though, that can be said to translate into a declaration that “he was considering running for the seat as an independent.”

It seems he draws the line at consuming his own product — or even monitoring it for quality control — so he has no idea what sort of news (or not) Fox News puts out. Even when that news ends up actually making the news.

As ThinkProgress and others have documented, for over a year now, Fox News has promoted and celebrated the anti-Obama Tea Party movement. But at a forum for the public affairs TV series, The Kalb Report, last night, Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox’s parent company, said that the network should not be “supporting” the movement:
The mogul was peppered with a host of questions related to his media empire’s political leanings, and in each case fought the perception that he’s made his fortune by catering to the conservative audience. Asked by an official at the progressive watchdog group, Media Matters, whether it was ethical for officials at Fox to promote the Tea Party movement (as has been documented on some occasion) he replied without hesitation.

“No. I don’t think we should be supporting the Tea Party or any other party. But I’d like to investigate what you are saying before condemning anyone.”

For Murdoch to say that he needs to investigate whether Fox News has been supporting the Tea Party is like the CEO of Procter and Gamble saying: “Soap? Really? We make soap? Let me check and get back to you on that.”

Two conservative Tea Party activists posted the address of the home (of Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother) on the Internet on Monday, mistakenly believing it was the home of the congressman. One of the activists urged others to “drop by” and “express their thanks” for Perriello’s vote in favor of health care reform.

Tuesday evening, Perriello’s brother’s family smelled gas and discovered the propane line of a gas-powered grill on their screened-in porch had been slashed.
[...]
Danville Tea Party leader Nigel Coleman was one of the two activists who posted Bo Perriello’s address online Monday.

“This is Rep. Thomas Stuart Price Perriello’s home address,” Coleman wrote Monday. “… I ain’t holding back anymore!!”

According to the Politico Web site, when Coleman learned that the address actually belonged to the congressman’s brother, he responded on a blog: “Do you mean I posted his brother’s address on my Facebook? Oh well, collateral damage.”

Coleman told The Daily Progress today that he is “shocked” and “almost speechless” at the possibility that someone would sever the propane line to Perriello’s brother’s house.

Of course, he is. Anyone would be. Especially after seeing the reaction to the callous “collateral damage” comment.

And in case you’re wondering about the “almost speechless”, apparently he meant that there was one thing he did particularly want to say:

Coleman added that he is not certain that the incident is related to the posting of the home’s address. “Of course, we don’t know this is a related event,” he said.

Of course.

Coleman, though, is just a Tea Party leader. And, presumably, a Tea Party leader is going to not just display the curiously blinding mixture of irrational, inchoate rage and helpless illogic that so many Tea Party footsoldiers proudly parade in public, he’s going to raise it to a higher level. He’s their leader, after all. He has to make them look up to him. (In case you’re wondering if you recognize Nigel Coleman’s name from somewhere, you sure do.)

But it’s not just Tea Party extremists. Republican Party officials are also getting into the vindictive-personal-revenge-for-healthcare-reform act. State party chairmen, no less:

Additionally, the Capitol Hill newspaper notes that “Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) said he had to change his personal cell phone number after a Republican gave it out to health care opponents.” The chairman of the North Dakota Republican Party read Pomeroy’s cell phone number aloud on the stage of the North Dakota Republican convention.

This guy’s name, by the way, is Gary Emineth. Apparently, ThinkProgress thinks that his name should be politely suppressed from the story. The upshot is that if you do a Google News search for “Gary Emineth”, you pull up only one solitary reference to this incident. And that’s a link that won’t even open properly for some reason. But intrepid research came up with the right version.

I think the least you can do when someone engages in such behavior is name ‘em and shame ‘em. And let it at least be on their Google search record, if nothing else.

It’s not all ugliness, though, from Republicans. There’s also unbelievable stupidity. This was Sen. John Barrasso on Fox News yesterday morning:

“In Utah, a member from Utah that voted on the bill, he was against it and then he was for it. What a coincidence that his brother just got named to be a federal judge,” Barrasso said.

Barrasso’s referring to Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT), whose highly qualified brother Scott was indeed nominated recently to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. But here’s the thing: Matheson voted no.

He voted no on the House health care bill in November. He voted no on the Senate bill on Sunday. And he even voted against the health care reconciliation bill, which will strip it of most of the deals Republicans are complaining about

He didn’t even bother to check how Jim Matheson had voted before he attacked him for selling his vote? Could anything exemplify so clearly just how little Republicans care whether anything they say is actually, you know, true?

The weirdest part of the evening came not during the speech but during the following Q&A session. Asked what she thought that a Republican-controlled congress’s top three priorities should be, she answered: stop spending, energy policy and … well, here’s the whole quote, judge for yourself:
I think, kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America’s spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we’re not afraid to say especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we’re not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that you know – they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance to our creator.

This was, as befits anyone who lusts to be the next Republican president after Georgie Porgie, a pre-screened, pre-selected question. In other words, what her Palinality delivered was not an off-the-cuff response but a carefully pre-composed answer.

So if we’re going back to the glory days of seeking divine intervention in times of potential trouble — and, really, isn’t any time a time of potential trouble? — I dare say we should also restore the monarchy. Just for consistency. Plus, I so want to see Sarah Palin reigning for a good thirty or forty years, to be succeeded by Bristol Palin.

* Why should the acronym make any more sense than the movement itself?