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Kevin Drum reads the moose entrails:
Apropos of nothing in particular, I want to go on the record with a prediction that Sarah Palin will disappear into a well-deserved obscurity after the election is over. She is not a "comer." She is not the future of the Republican Party. She will not run for president in 2012. In fact, she won't maintain any kind of serious national political standing at all. At best, she'll spend the next few years being a celebrity starter at NASCAR races and speaking at Republican prayer breakfasts. At worst, she'll be an occasional butt of late night comics.Palin is lazy, ill-informed, contemptuous of policy, and way too convinced that everybody in the country is dazzled by her folksy energy and thousand-watt smile. Yes, the diehard GOP base is rapturously in love with Palin and her media mockin' ways, but that's more a reflection on the base's future, not hers. Palin is a three-day wonder who's already a month past her sell-by date, and on November 5th she'll disappear to Wasilla for good.Just wanted to get that off my chest. Anybody disagree?I agree with that. My hunch is a lot of folks are going to wish McCain had chosen Bobby Jindal, not Sarah Palin. Say what you will about Jindal, but the guy understands national affairs and can string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into points. It's a useful skill in national politics, even if the GOP base has had to spend three months convincing itself that they've always hated politicians who were eloquent speakers, even that slick Ronald Reagan. Palin was a reactive pick meant to take advantage of a momentary media bubble around dissatisfied Clinton voters. She then benefited from the base's need to rally around their candidate. When the election ends, the conditions that enabled her rise will dissolve, and the GOP will turn to newer faces. And hey, would you look at that: Jindal is already slated to headline a major Christian Right fundraising dinner in Iowa!
