Taibbi runs a piece on Palin he wrote that was never published, which probably gets at the conservative culture-war mindset better than anything I’ve seen:
Just as she had during the campaign last fall, Palin defied rational analysis by making a primal connection with the subterranean resentments of white middle America, which is apparently so pissed off now at the rest of the planet for not coddling its hurt feelings in the multicultural age that it is willing to embrace any politician who validates its insane sense of f*****-overness.
Nobody understands this political reality quite like Palin, even if she doesn’t actually understand it in the sense of someone who thinks her way to a conclusion, but merely lives it, unconsciously, with the unerring instinct of a herd animal. Palin’s supporters don’t judge her according to her almost completely nonexistent qualifications for serious office, they perceive her as they would a character in a Biblical narrative, a Job in heels with cross-eyes and a mashed-potato-brained husband who happens to spend a lot of time getting shat upon by Letterman and Maureen Dowd and the other modern-day Enemies of Christ.
On some level Palin understands better than any of us that what’s important to her base isn’t how well she does her job or even what she does with her time before 2012, but who her enemies are and how loudly she beats the drum against them – and when the news comes out that these foes have recently driven her to such distraction that she even started losing her hair (reportedly necessitating a recent emergency trip to personal hairdresser Jessica Steele), it elevates her conservative martyr credentials to previously unimagined levels.
As a national candidate she seems to us normal/rational observers mortally wounded, but as a conduit for middle American resentment she may actually have gained in stature, and don’t be at all surprised if she doesn’t emerge with the status of something like a religious figure when they roll the rock back for her inevitable candidacy three years from now. …
<snip>
She could turn her resignation into the supreme expression of conservative principle, seeming to show such high distaste for government that she can quit an executive job in a nervous panic and still get high marks from her base for ideological leadership – a hilariously contradictory and idiotic situation only possible in a country willing to go past a certain intellectual point of no return.
Emphasis added.
Well, Sarah’s fans are well past that point. It’s all herd animal for them - all resentment - all martyrdom. Qualifications? You want qualifications? How elitist of you. So she quit - so what? So what if the eldest daughter of this socially conserative politician has a kid out of wedlock?
So what? All of that is merely proof that the people who think they’re better than us are out to get us. And we resent it.
And that’s the entirety of Sarah Palin as a political entity, right there.
Update: Sullivan:
I think the support for Palin among the GOP base is now a matter of identity and religion, so that no actual data could hurt her chances. In some ways, the worse she does helps her. The base sees her failings as proof that the libruls and the establishment is out to get her. I’m not sure that any revelation would hurt her now with this group.
It wouldn’t.
