I don’t say this lightly. This is the strangest speech I’ve ever seen Sarah Palin deliver.
— @RealClearScott

My apologies for not posting much in the last few days. In the new writing job, I have to maintain a window of time between anything I offer up there and anything I post elsewhere. On FTB, the only thing standing between me and the public facing page is a button on my edit screen that says “publish.” On other sites it has to pass exec editor muster, then go through a copy editor and scheduler, all of which takes time. I’m still trying to get into the flow and work out the mechanics on that.

In the meantime, it’s congressman Steve King to the rescue, now with 100% more value voters tea-party anger! King thew himself a little jamboree over the weekend, in Iowa of course. Where DC city slickers and urban cowboys-in-costume auditioned to win the part of craziest wackjob to a carefully selected crowd of judges composed of legit whack jobs. There was the usual pandering, some did better than others — don’t under estimate governors Scott Walker (R-WI) or Chris Christie (R-NJ). These shysters are well versed in threading the crazy needle and subtly blowing the dog whistle while sounding halfway sane and reasonable to the average uninformed, undecided voter.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand was just flat out painful to watch. I actually found myself rooting for her out of something akin to pity:

WashEx: As 2016 race begins, GOP faces its Palin problem — “Long and disjointed,” said one social conservative activist when asked for reaction. “A weird speech,” said another conservative activist. “Terrible. Didn’t make any sense.” “There was a certain coarseness to her that wasn’t there before,” said yet another social conservative who noted that some in the crowd were uncomfortable with Palin declarations like, “Screw the left in Hollywood!” (It’s not that they like the left in Hollywood — just the opposite — but the crudeness of Palin’s expressions turned them off.)

“I know she is popular, but it is hard to take her seriously given that performance,” said Sam Clovis, the conservative Iowa college professor, radio commentator, and sometime political candidate. “Palin was a sad story Saturday. With every speech she gives, she gets worse and worse. If one were playing a political cliche drinking game, no one would have been sober after the first 15 minutes of an interminable ramble. It was really painful.”

“I think she has a role in the conservative movement and in the party,” Clovis continued, “but she needs to get serious about what it is she can contribute and accomplish.”

That role, btw, is easily defined as hating on Obama specifically and progressives in general to the of delight hard-core conservative victims of the hard-right media misinformation campaign.

Before we all celebrate, chuckle, and put draft Palin stickers on our humvees, keep in mind how massively successful that propaganda campaign has been, especially in light of what the religious right and their handlers actually have to work with over the last decade or so: the greatest national security disaster since Pearl Harbor, the greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression, hell, even the greatest failure in something as cut and dry as natural disaster relief on the heels of a hurricane drifting into New Orleans that could literally be seen approaching from the moon for days on end.

Also bear in mind, these serial disasters weren’t flukes that had to happen anyway no matter who happened to be in charge. They were, each and everyone, in one form or another, the result of dismissing proven experts combined with wishful thinking and rose-colored glasses about long expressed policy goals, backed, in most cases, by a sustained, continuing PR effort, in turn backed by a mountain of conservative money and conservative media that shows no sign of slowing down. A flood of money and effort that is only increasing, approaching biblical proportions, in the last few years. Don’t kid yourself for a second, 2016 is any party’s race to win or lose at this early juncture.