Like Survivor, the alliances are beginning to form in advance of the first round of primary purges. And like leeches on a willing host, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are aligning around front-runner Donald Trump.
It really is pathetic. Donald Trump, the unserious candidate of the century, needs his Big Buddy Hannity to save him from that mean ole George Stephanopoulis, after a particularly awkward interview on ABC's Good Morning America yesterday morning.
In classic horror movie fashion, Sarah Palin is the zombie rising yet again from the dark and murky corners. Her host this time? The Donald, of course.
I clipped this short excerpt about Trump, but in the full segment she goes on about how fortunate we all are that we have fair and balanced media so that candidates can be sure to control their message, and how glad she is for Facebook and social media to get her message out. Oh, happy day.
As usual, Palin and Hannity never really come out and say a certificate of live birth is a lesser document. They run this from two tangents. First, Palin claims that the Donald really wants to talk about serious issues like oil but GSteph keeps pushing the conversation back to his birtherism. Second, and offered in an almost offhand way as if to downplay it (but not really), Palin repeats the assertion that the president just hasn't answered this question directly. Because evidently producing this certificate of live birth which was acceptable for both of my children's passports, Social Security cards and drivers licenses, post-Patriot Act is simply inadequate in some ephemeral, undefined universe. Translation: We know it's really stupid but it's effective so we're going to keep flogging it.
They're all glomming onto the Iowa poll Rachel Maddow mentioned on her show tonight showing that 74% of Iowa Republicans think Barack Obama was not born in the United States, or they're not sure if he was. Take this poll for what it's worth. It was an automated poll, and the questions seem almost guaranteed to trigger responses that fit an expected outcome. Nevertheless, it encourages people like Donald Trump to keep...trumpeting, with Sarah Palin floating along on his purse strings coattails.
Later in the show, Michele Bachmann jumps on the bandwagon too. Why the heck not? It seems like the economy and international scene can be damned to these incredibly banal and worthless candidates in favor of a blowhard with a bad toupee' who wants to invade Middle Eastern countries and take their oil as bounty.
I've been reading about the whacko right wing during FDR's time and leading into the 50s. In many ways, they pale in comparison to what we're watching unfold right now. Yes, they flogged communism as the demon in the room, but now they've just substituted Muslims where commies used to be. They were racists and bullies like today, but what they did not have was 24/7 cable "news" (and I use the term loosely) pushing the narrative, polls, and voters.
I'm going to take a guess here and say that the Tea Party knows they're losing the populist momentum they captured in 2009, and so they're revisiting old strategies in the hopes of getting it back. I just don't see it working this time.
