What Palin's resignation says about the GOP

From the moment of her selection as the vice presidential nominee, we non-Alaskans heard a lot about what made Sarah Palin different from your average lower-48 woman, from moose-hunting on down the line - you know the story.   The "maverick" storyline, a variation on the McCain standard, worked very well in around the time of the convention, but her numbers began to sink for some of the vary same reasons that the GOP as a whole is in a ditch.  Here's why:

1. The obsession with media bias.  Palin went on and on about the "gotcha media" and the unfair shake she got in the press.  Yes, she was often treated dismissively and with the same sense of curiosity usually reserved for lost tribes of the Amazon.  Still, the media is what it is and whining about it won't change that.  In addition, she did no favors for herself, completely bombing one open-ended softball after another in the famous Katie Couric interview that, in retrospect, marked the beginning of the end of her political career.  And no, "what news sources do you read," is not a "gotcha" question.

If one theme has unified the right's blogs, magazines and radio shows, it has been an endless stream of media criticism.  Most of it is richly deserved.  But to paraphrase our former SecDef, "you go to war with the media you have, not the media you wish you had."

2. The victim mentality.  Am I the only person around here who thinks Palin milked the Letterman controversy for too long?  When something like that happens, you demand an apology (not two) and try to act like the better person.  Instead, there were several TV interviews over the course of a week.  Does she really think that the problem voters had with her is that she wasn't sufficiently sympathetic?  If liberals have showed us anything over the past half-century, it's that the victim mentality doesn't do much for the victims.  Same goes here, both for Palin and the party.

Every day, I read on this site and others about how the deck is always stacked against the right.  First, there is a horde of brainwashed Obamabots ready to follow Dear Leader's wishes (paranoid much?).  Then, we didn't lose by millions of votes across many formerly-red states, it was ACORN.  When it comes to independents, lean-republicans and the other people who really matter, this comes off as whining and conspiracy-mongering.  A wellspring of leadership, it is not.

3. It's not always an issue of motives.  I don't think I'm the only person who has grown tired of Palin defenders claiming anyone who criticizes her of being part of an elite, Ivy League, cocktail-sipping fraternity that simply will not accept an out-of-towner who went to sub-par schools.  Is it that hard to imagine that reasonable people who seek common goals can say that a particular politician is not well-suited for national office?  The knee-jerk appeals to class resentment are akin to sticking your fingers in your ears and singing.  Palin has a very different campaign style and some serious gaps in her policy knowledge.  Acknowledge that or dispute that, but don't cast aspersions.

The main reason that the Bill Ayers material towards the end of the campaign didn't stick is because people looked at Obama and didn't believe what the critics were saying - namely, that he's really some sort of secret radical closer in alignment to 60s hippie terrorists than to middle class America.  A better strategy would have been to take the man at his words, showing good faith, and then going after his policies based on the ample problems they had on their face.  It comes off as conspiratorial and paranoid to assign unseen motives to a political candidate.

What will we learn from the Palin story?  If we continue to blame the media, Letterman, Frum and the Harvard Alumni Association, perhaps nothing.