Going rogue

Andrew Sullivan discusses the cynical marketing of Sarah Palin:

We are asked to believe that she wrote a 400-page autobiography in two months. Although no one ever believed Harper Collins' Jonathan Burnham was actually interested in the content of books, this new contract and its absurd delivery date closes the case. Then we have John Fund this morning hailing the book as a sure-fire best-seller, and praising the rogue strategy against McCain. He is no doubt correct about the sales. But Fund is allegedly a serious figure on the right. His and his newspaper's capitulation to the Palin farce is another sign that just as Burnham believes publishing is simply marketing, so Fund believes politics is about what sells.

He reveals the contours of the next Republican presidential campaign, in which Palin will lead a cohort of Beck and Limbaugh dittoheads on a platform of a holy war in the Middle East, the restitution of torture as a core American value, and tax cuts in the face of massive and mounting debt....

The days of open press conferences will be over as Palin narrow-casts only to the base. At the same time, you see the right urging a coup, while all but beating a drum for the assassination of the president, an event that would tip this country into a near civil war. In this climate, establishment conservatism for the most part is fanning the flames and pouring on the gasoline.

I always thought it would get worse before it gets better. But I never thought it would get this poisonous this soon.

To borrow a line from Monty Python, they're not dead yet. I, of course, mean that figuratively. Unfortunately, many in the right-wing base do not.