Tinyfeet and Muttonchops Deconstruct Sarah Palin

I said I'd be taking a break, but Palin's latest antic (quitting her job) has set my alarm system on red alert. Everyone, and that means everyone, is wondering exactly what she is up to, and why she did it. Lots of theories and speculations are spinning around the blogosphere, but nobody really knows the answer to either question. I have my own theory, and it is not pretty. I found one lone anonymous comment on a blog that jumped out at me, because it is precisely what I think:

"I Look for her to become a free-lance highly vocal attack dog against Obama and his programs. She could be a real problem for health care. And she'll be vocal about "national security" -- that is, Iran and other issues. Her immediate goal is to attack. It's what she is best at. Not policy or governing. Just attacking."


And then, today, I came across two more comments (by tinyfeet and Muttonchops on the Huffington Post) putting forth a similar view. I think that, together, these three comments have nailed it. This woman, ridiculous as she may be, is a potentially serious danger to this country.

tinyfeet:
Here is Post-modern, 21st Century Sarah's game plan: She is planning to reemerge in 2011 at the helm of an 'army of the righteous.' She will be, as her neatly coded 'higher calling' indicated, their self-styled Joan of Arc. Her army, indeed her entire base, will be comprised of virulent wingnuts, all gassed up on her strange pastiche of corn, lies, illiterate evangelism and poorly constructed jingoistic sound bytes. She won't win, but she'll scare the wits out of the rational. She'll continue her attempts to cow the media and anyone else who disagrees with her by rolling herself in an American flag, harnessing the paranoid fury of the NRA, and dousing herself with holy water. She is an ambitious, thin-skinned, venal, ruthless person - in short, a politician - morally and ethically as hollow and full of hot air as a carnival balloon, and a lightning rod for the ideologically impaired. She's not going away. The upside to this horror show is that its entertainment value will at least equal its freakishness, and those that align with her will be wearing their ignorance in public.

Muttonchops:
What"s important here is that, unconstrained by any meaningful connections to the Republican Party, Sarah Palin will now become the perfect spokesperson for an entire subculture of angry, white, aggressive, fully armed, hyper-religious, militaristic bigots.

Sarah"s genuinely one of them, always has been. Her appeals to their simple-minded prejudices are perfectly natural for her. Her supporters sense that, and that"s why they love her. Incapable of more than the most basic abstract reasoning, and handicapped by a severely limited lexicon, this group has a peculiar way of communicating. She and they all think in sound-bites, simple phrases and formulas that provide a comprehensible, confirming, and therefore wholly satisfactory means to explain and "understand" their world.

Now that Sarah has gotten a taste of the adulation her fans exude for her during her appearances, all she wants is more of it. As the economy worsens and international tensions increase, the mutual feedback between her and her audience will cause them all to become more and more radicalized.

This is going to be interesting.