Delusional

I couldn't help but snicker reading this editorial in the Michigan Daily. In it, Alex Prasad laments the opportunities Palin missed at the vice-presidential debate:

For example, Biden, speaking of Vice President Dick Cheney, said, “The idea
(Cheney) doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of
the vice president of the United States, that's the executive branch.”

Palin easily could have retorted, “Actually Joe, Article I of the
Constitution discussed legislative power. Ya know, it’s disappointing that a
sitting senator doesn’t even know the Constitution he’s sworn to protect. The
American people need somebody who is intimately familiar with the
Constitution.”

Seriously? Do you really think Sarah Palin is "intimately familiar with the Constitution"? Do you think someone who can't even remember what publications she reads knows which article of the constitution refers to what? Does it seem like Palin would say anything in that above statement besides "Actually Joe" and "Ya know"? Prasad continues:

The moderator, Gwen Ifill, asked Biden if Americans have the stomach for all
the intervention he has proposed over the years, citing his calls for
intervention in Bosnia, Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan. Biden responded, “I think the
American public has the stomach for success. My recommendations on Bosnia …
saved tens of thousands of lives … (and) the end result was it worked.”

[....Palin] should have answered as follows: “Ya know, let’s talk about
success senator. Certainly, I can’t match your long record in the realm of
foreign policy. But, I don’t think the American people — those Main Streeters —
just want experience. They want good Main Street judgment. You cite Bosnia as a success, yet 13 years after the initial conflict, we still have 10,000 troops
there. You were one of the few opposed the first Gulf War, saying thousands of
U.S. soldiers would die. In fact, only 293 did in an overwhelming victory. Your
maverick opposition was irresponsible.

In addition to the fact that Palin again probably does not know these things, I fail to see how these points will help her win the debate. How can you criticize Biden for supporting something that resulted in 10,000 troops staying in Bosnia for 13 years when McCain wants troops to stay in Iraq for 100 years?* If our victory in the first Gulf War was so overwhelming, why was it necessary to go to war with Iraq again just 12 years later? And you're really going to criticize someone who is not John McCain for being an irresponsible maverick? Yeah, that's a good idea.

Despite the hopes of the Obama campaign and many liberals, electoral defeat
may just be the thing that reignites the conservative base. Democrats better
hope that Republicans don’t find the second coming of Ronald Reagan by 2012, or
conservatives will again unite behind a presidential candidate.

Wow. Are conservatives really that relentlessly optimistic/out of touch with reality? Maybe I'm wrong here, maybe I'm the one being overly optimistic, but it seems to me that we're in the middle of a paradigm shift. The pendulum is swinging leftward. Americans are tired of the excesses of conservatism and the Bush administration: deregulation, wars without provocation, living without a safety net, ignoring our civil liberties, corruption, etc. This is not to say that liberals cannot be guilty of their own excesses; indeed, Americans upset with Great Society, Vietnam, the Chicago protests, race riots, and the Iranian hostage crisis deserted Johnson, Humphrey, and Carter and turned to Nixon and then Reagan. We've been living in a conservative age ever since. Until now.

*NOTE: McCain does not want to see American troops fighting in Iraq for a century like the Obama campaign might want you to think. McCain wants the U.S. to establish a peacetime presence there as in Germany or South Korea or Bosnia. Permanent bases in Iraq are still a bad idea, though.