Jonah Goldberg turns in some unremarkable cheerleading for Sarah Palin, claiming that "Palin took dead aim at the bosses of her own party." Presumably this was after she ran the 527 organization of the now-indicted Sen. Ted Stevens or campaigned with him in 2006, but I digress. I'm mainly bothered by Goldberg's argument that pointing out Palin's relative inexperience as an elected official is the equivalent of "ridiculing small towns."
I don't know where Goldberg is from, but I grew up in a small town -- smaller than the town that Palin was mayor of, I think -- and so I know is that people in small towns aren't stupid. They can listen to Joe Biden argue that supervising the town manager and making sure the roads get fixed doesn't make someone ready to be Vice-President, and understand that Biden isn't knocking small towns.
They know very well the jobs their elected officials perform, and understand their limitations, mostly because they know them personally. I know I wouldn't put any of my old Selectmen on the ticket, even if one of them had spent two years as governor of my state, New Hampshire. Goldberg's argument that oversensitive rubes can't distinguish between arguments and insults is more condescending than anything the Obama campaign has said about Palin.
After the jump, John Cougar.
--Tim Fernholz
