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Go Home The Breakup

THE PLANK OCTOBER 25, 2008

The Breakup

BY AUTHOR INFO NEEDED

What will the McCain-Palin relationship look like if the ticket loses a week from Tuesday? Like this, only more so:

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the
final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are
complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to
disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her,
creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with
them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin
blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image
— even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively
inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's
decline.

"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a
senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet.
He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public
pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

Ben Smith's excellent piece contains many good nuggets, including that the Palinophiles are particularly unhappy with McCain strategist Steve Schmidt and spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace, and that Palin herself has grown close to foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann. And then there's this:

She's also begun to make her own ad hoc calls about the campaign's
direction and the ticket's policy. McCain, for instance, has remained
silent on Democrats' calls for a stimulus package of new spending, a
move many conservatives oppose, but which could be broadly popular. But
in an interview with the conservative radio host Glenn Beck earlier
this week, Palin went "off the reservation" to make the campaign
policy, one aide said.

As they say, read the whole thing.

--Christopher Orr

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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40 comments

"More rogue", that's pretty funny. I'd say it's "More Connie Russo" from "Married to the Mob".

Remember that great performance by Mercedes Ruehl, where she was the ultimate wild-eyed harridan terrorizing everyone in her path?

I'd like to see Tina Fey add a little Connie Russo to her Palin, let's see Sarah on the warpath.

- fougasseu

October 25, 2008 at 10:52am

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Don't forget that she's supposed to be a maverick like John.  I'll bet she's trying to distance herself from McCain and his campaign so she'll look good in four years.  

- WaltB

October 25, 2008 at 10:58am

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Oh gee, no one saw THIS coming.  Imagine!  Palin blaming everyone but herself and looking out for Number One?  

No WAY.  I'm shocked I tell you SHOCKED.

This is really isulting to McCain, even though he so has ot coming, I'm still amazed at Palin's gall.  

All McCain or Schmidt has to do to shut her up is say:

"Tomorrow morning, 9:00 am, we've scheduled your first Meet the Press - be there."

or

"Your press conference will be tomorrow morning at 9:00 am, we've already contacted everyone. Wear the black suit."

McCain's hypocrisy about supposedly hating "arrogant phonies" (look in the mirror old man) needs to be telegraphed to the world.  

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 11:04am

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Palinophiles?  Really?  You mean to say there are political operatives within the McCain camp at this late date who have had close interactions with Palin and are stupid enough to still think that Palin has any kind of capability to be a player on the national political stage?  No wonder the McCain campaign has been so ineptly run!  Too many morons.

- woland

October 25, 2008 at 11:11am

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It's not too late to drop her ass, I'm convinced of that.  So the racist dingbats go bonkers?  That should be a badge of honor.  Is having their support what Mr Last Honorable Man really wants anyway?  Right now, you look pathetic.  Do you like that?  

You should at least go down with dignity.

McCain - have SOME dignity, SOME semblence of honor.  Fire her, tell the racists they are a disgrace, hit the road and the talk shows with Holy Joe and spend the last week being able to live with yourself.

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 11:12am

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PS Where's the popcorn?  This will be the best installment of the whole soap opera.

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 11:15am

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Wandy I think you are prophetic.  If things continue to degrade this week for the McCain campaign and Palin keeps grousing I think scheduling Palin for Meet the Press next week Sunday with little notice would be awesome.  The least McCain could do for this country at this point after running such a divisive and despicable campaign is help to destroy the Frankenstein monster of Palin that he created.

- woland

October 25, 2008 at 11:16am

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fougasseu-

You write: "I'd say it's 'More Connie Russo' from 'Married to the Mob' [for Palin]. Remember that great performance by Mercedes Ruehl, where she was the ultimate wild-eyed harridan terrorizing everyone in her path?"

So, then, you'd like to see Sarah Palin get punched in the face by Michele Pfeiffer?

- JosephCuomo

October 25, 2008 at 11:34am

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Palin's backers are blaming _Steve Schmidt_? Do they realize that he's the only reason everyone knows who she is now?

- ackyri

October 25, 2008 at 11:38am

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Just as Palin's vanity led her to accept the offer to join the ticket "without any hesitation" (!), the same vanity blinds her to any flaw she might have. She really believes she could be a great president and any evidence to the contrary is someone else's fault. This is not the stupidity of a person with a low IQ, this is the blindness of a mediocre narcissist. It is more dangerous than a mere lack of intelligence because, like all truly great stupidity, it is willful. She is not stupid because she lacks gray matter, she is stupid because she _chooses_ to see only evidence that confirms her world view.

When such people are able, by their innate political talent and circumstances of history, to gain large followings, then the world is introduced to another Idi Amin, Mugabe, Saddam, etc. They begin as charismatic populists, they move on to "flexible" application of the law (see  Palin's views on the powers of the VP) and they end up as bloody-handed despots. This is because the core of their world view and the architecture of their morality is based on one simple premise: I am good. Therefore anything I want is good, and anything that opposes me is bad.

"If the president does it, it isn't illegal," quoth Richard Nixon.

The thing that would make a Palin presidency so much more dangerous than Nixon is that, unlike Nixon, she seems to have no real interest in national policy. She is the worst possible choice for a national leader, but what an interesting character study! She would like to slip into the shoes of the Reagan of stardom and power, but she fits much better in those of the Regan of King Lear. And that's sort of the act we are seeing played out now. The old king who gave all to the daughter who swore her love to him now finds how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankeless running mate.

Oh, Nuncle, come back to your senses and at least end, like Lear, with some sense of grace and dignity!

We could do an opera! Hey, my dad has a barn we could use...

- Wasatcher

October 25, 2008 at 11:44am

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Forget Meet the Press.  If McCain really wants to teach Palin a lesson, put her on Bill Maher.

- timteeter

October 25, 2008 at 11:48am

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McCain is on Meet the Press tomorrow. Imagine if he staged an October surprise. Knowing how he likes to roll, it woudn't be surprising if he gave no forewarning (the way Powell did so that pretty much everyone knew what he was going to say before he said it).

No, I don't think it's going to happen but I'll make sure the popcorn's ready for Sunday morning nonetheless.

In all seriousness, he can't fire her...yet. If things continue to deteriorate and she openly defies the campaign...well, it will get very interesting.

- CharlesFosterKane

October 25, 2008 at 11:54am

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teeter - does McCain have the cajones?  This will be he question of the week.  

Does he just sit there and look like a rich, gagged, cuckolded old fool or does he step up and be a man about this?

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 12:03pm

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This is also from the Ben Smith piece:

_______________________________________________________________________________

"'Palin's 'instincts," on display in recent days, have had her opening up to the media, including a round of interviews on talk radio, cable and broadcast outlets, as well as chats with her traveling press and local reporters.

Reporters really began to notice the change last Sunday, when Palin strolled over to a local television crew in Colorado Springs.

"Get Tracey," a staffer called out. . .summoning spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt, who reportedly "tried several times to cut it off with a terse 'Thank you!' in between questions, to no avail."

___________________________________________________________________________

I say: LET PALIN BE PALIN!!!

Let's have more rogue comments, more rogue policy pronouncements, more press conferences, more interviews, more follow-up questions, more nonsensical answers, more stunned and protracted silences.

Let's hear more on the role of the VP as leader of the Senate, more on the innumerable books and newspapers and magazines she has read, more winks, more soccer mom rants, more I'm-just-like-you-an-ordinary-American-sitting-at-my-kitchen-table boasts, more astronomically expensive make-up and hair and clothes, more I-can-see-Russia foreign policy pronouncements!

Let Palin go out in a blaze of unintentional self-satirizing glory!

Let Sarah be Sarah in the final days of this campaign, and (one hopes) the final days of her brief, national poltiical career!

- JosephCuomo

October 25, 2008 at 12:04pm

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How about this?

"The Couric interview — her only unstaged appearance for a week — was "water torture," as one internal ally put it."

Is a -Republican- insider referring to waterboarding as torture????

- MichLib

October 25, 2008 at 12:12pm

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She took down an incumbent governor with minimal budget and support. She's smart, she's aggressive, she's good with people, and she photographs well. The Current Occupant rode a lot less into his current job. She's more than smart enough to learn to handle the kind of obvious questions the press asks at press conferences and clever enough to evade the ones she can't or won't answer.  Let me remind you that W's economic proposals in 2000 were self-evidently nonsense but he managed to evade that just by saying "fuzzy numbers" and watching the press ignore the entire issue. Don't underestimate her.

- AlanK

October 25, 2008 at 12:13pm

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you're right AlanK, but I don't think she's at all smart, she's shown zero evidence of that.  I do think she's exceptionally cunning and utterly without shame, which are probably more important.

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 12:18pm

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MichLib, I think he was referring to *Chinese* water torture, of the drip-drop-drip on the forehead variety.

- thetraytiger

October 25, 2008 at 12:27pm

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AlanK writes:

-- The Current Occupant rode a lot less into his current job.

Not really. By the time he was elected President, Bush had been Governor of Texas for six years. Furthermore, given that his dad had been VP for eight years and President for four years, Bush was much closer to the levers of Republican power than was and is Palin.

- ndmackenzie

October 25, 2008 at 12:39pm

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In November 1962 another failed VP candidate followed up his loss two years earlier by losing the governor's race in California, after which the apparently washed-up, paranoid, charisma-bereft Republican hack announced, "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more," and pretty much disappeared...for a while.

You know how that worked out.

The question isn't, is Sarah Palin too stupid to become President of the United States. The question is, are the American people stupid enough to vote for her.

If we were stupid enough to elect Richard Nixon and George W. Bush (each twice), we can elect Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, let alone the Moosenator.  We were, and YES WE CAN!

The easiest way to begin to elect Sarah Palin President of the United States is to cease taking the concept of Sarah Palin becoming President of the United States seriously.

- williamyard

October 25, 2008 at 12:40pm

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AlanK-

Watch these two youtube videos of Palin at her Pentecostal church:

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube.com/watch

These  two videos are parts one & two of Sarah Palin speaking at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June of this year. Palin was a member of this Pentecostal church (Assemblies of God is the world's largest Pentecostal denomination) from the time she was baptized in her teens until 2002, when she began to seek state-wide office. She remained a member there for decades before switching to the independent evangelical Wasilla Bible Church (a non-Pentecostal, though biblical literalist, church) in 2002. She has also apparently worshipped at Wasilla's Church on the Rock, an independent Pentecostal church, as well as Juneau Christian Center, another Assemblies of God church. When she was sworn in as governor, the invocation was given by Pat Riley, her pastor for many years at Wasilla Assembly of God. Sarah P, as governor, then had the street in front of that church renamed Riley Avenue.  

When Palin spoke at Wasilla Assembly of God in June of this year, she spoke in the language of that faith: referring to her oldest son, Track, an Army private, who was about to be sent to Iraq, Palin asked. . . .for prayer 'that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God.'

"That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for--that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan,' she said.

SP also uses Pentecostal language (in the first video) when speaking about her support for a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline originating in Alaska's North Slope. Palin says: "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built. So pray for that." (Note the presumption implicit in this statement: that one can literally know what cannot be known, ie, God's will, especially with regard to a gas pipeline.)

What strikes me here is that SP seems not only sincere in her use of such language, but clearly at ease with the beliefs she is espousing and apparently takes for granted (that God's will can be known, and applied to political action).

You might also note that at one point Palin quotes a particular line from the bible (at about six minutes in), and asks God that those assembled before her--"spiritual warriors" (Masters Commission students) who are apparently now going out into the world to preach--be visited with "the spirit of revelation, also including that spirit of prophesy--THAT GOD'S GOING TO TELL YOU WHAT'S GOING ON, AND WHAT IS GOING TO GO ON." [emphasis added]

This is direct evidence that Palin believes what many Pentecostals believe: they presume to know what cannot be known. They presume to know God's will. They presume to know the future. Which is profoundly irrational, and profoundly dangerous.  

Part two (the second video above) begins by replaying a segment from part one, and doesn't launch into new material until about four minutes in, but it's also worth watching, especially for what the current pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God says (at about 5:20) as Palin stands beside him: "I believe Alaska is ONE OF THE REFUGE STATES--come on you guys--IN THE LAST DAYS, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state and the church has to be ready to minister to them." [emphasis added]

This is clearly a reference to Pentecostal, post-Trib eschatology, in that he believes that Alaska will serve as a sanctuary for believers during the horrors of the coming Tribulation, and the last days of human history. (Post-Tribs like Pat Robertson, unlike Pre-Tribs such as the late Jerry Falwell, believe that Christians will live through a seven-year period of unprecedented horror and worldwide catastrophe, the Tribulation. Many survivalists, for instance, are post-Trib. Pre-Tribs believe they will be raptured into heaven before the Tribulation begins.)

Another moment worth noting (at about seven minutes in): Palin's former pastor, Pastor Riley (the one who delivered the invocation at her inauguration as governor, and the one for whom she had the street in front of this church named), breaks down in tears when thanking the lord for working his will through those assembled, and through SP in particular (ie, by making her governor), and asking that God's "touch will be upon us."

One last thing: watching these two videos has gone a long way toward convincing me that the GOP candidate for VP is indeed a true-believing Pentecostal, who, via supposed divine intervention, presumes to know what cannot be known ("what is going to go on"), and accepts the fundamental core beliefs of the Assemblies of God church.

- JosephCuomo

October 25, 2008 at 1:12pm

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Thank you, JoeC.

- williamyard

October 25, 2008 at 1:19pm

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I'm getting more scared every day with the mobs and McCain's refusal to acknowledge reality, something bad is going to happen.

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 2:16pm

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AlanK, you write: "She's more than smart enough to learn to handle the kind of obvious questions the press asks at press conferences and clever enough to evade the ones she can't or won't answer. "

If that's true, why hasn't she done it yet?

- BHLnyc

October 25, 2008 at 3:00pm

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Scary shit Joe C.

- Wandreycer1

October 25, 2008 at 3:43pm

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BHL,

She's been at this for 2 months. Even if she's not the brightest person around, she could probably get the hang of it over 4 or 8 years.  Hell, that's even enough time to learn about policy.  The question  isn't so much whether she *can* do those things, but whether she's willing to put in the necessary work.

- AlanSP

October 25, 2008 at 3:44pm

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AlanSP: I guess I'm of the opinion that you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Dan Quayle spent four years as vice president -- theoretically good training to become president -- but couldn't parlay that into a shot at the White House because he was never able to live down his reputation as a lightweight. So far I see nothing to suggest that Palin offers anything deeper.

- BHLnyc

October 25, 2008 at 4:29pm

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BHL, I think over time an impression can be revised. Heck, I used to think McCain really was to the left of his party and stood up on principle.

- epicciuto

October 25, 2008 at 5:02pm

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The thing that's really disturbing about Palin is not so much that she seems uninterested in policy, intellectually incurious, and given to "communicating" in a stream of incoherent non-sequiturs.  That hasn't prevented people gaining high office in the past.  People forget that one of the reasons that Bush won in 2000 was that there was a general awareness of his lack of intellectual chops but also a widely-held belief that he would appoint smart people and had a team of experienced heads (Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc) around him.

That proved to be a bit more complicated, of course, and not quite so true.  We've lived the story.  What is downright scary about Palin, however, is that she does not even pretend to want a cabal of smart thinkers around her.  Thinking makes her nervous and resentful.  What she wants around her is a bunch of high-school friends and an ideological echo-chamber in which nothing too demanding gets through.  What's equally scary is that there is a large constituency out there that's still totally ok with that notion of leadership at the highest level of the nation.  Subtle conservatives who play a clever game to keep the resentful populists on board can get a nasty shock when the resentful populists go looking for something more authentically like them.

- ironyroad

October 25, 2008 at 5:13pm

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It is evident to me, confirmed by the 'tubes JosephCuomo links to (thanks for those, also :-), that Palin's religious (and political) beliefs are representative of her environment, i.e. small town Alaska. They can seem screwball to us but there I think they are normative. That's a principal reason she remains highly popular in Alaska in spite of her declining reputation in the lower 48, also why she continues to be highly popular with her religio-political base elsewhere. She's a product of there ("here"), and one of them ("us").

I agree with Wandrey that Palin has innate political "street sense," self-aware plus flair for the dramatic. She also is hungry for and bent on being President - I think I read she said as a child she wanted and would someday be President. I bet she won't crawl back to Alaska if she and McCain lose. She's a hero there and her fame will only grow. She may screw up but I think she has the wit and will to survive and come back stronger after a defeat. She's a formidable politician, and must be reckoned with.

One other thing strikes me, she's a populist, and an insurrectionist. Look for a bid to take the reins of the G.O.P. conservatives who will not it seems ever be deterred. "They" have G-d on their side, and they mean to trample on their enemies, "with the Lord's favor and G-d's help."

- tomeg

October 25, 2008 at 5:56pm

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JoeCuo: Michele Pfeiffer, no, Michele Bachmann...maybe.

- fougasseu

October 25, 2008 at 6:00pm

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Y'know I used to think the notion of waking up in a cold sweat was just an expression.  Then Sarah Palin came along and proved me wrong.  This will not help me to recover any beauty sleep, JoeC.  Ye Gods.

- adaglas

October 25, 2008 at 6:34pm

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tomeg, I think you have it right in terms of her political views, but her religious views are not representative of small town Alaska. They are very representative of her hometown and of a few other places, but most small-town Alaska is not characterized by her Pentecostal wackiness.  North Pole, a small town about 20 minutes down the road from Fairbanks, is a lot like the Mat-Su Valley (seemingly zoned for churches and meth labs, except that the people there think zoning, building permits and the like is socialism).

But another important thing is that her extreme religious views really did not come out in her campaign for Governor, and barely showed up in her 2 years as Governor. There was the occasional odd comment, but nothing so overt. She has campaigned for VP as a different and much more extreme candidate than she ever did here. Even her folksiness has been exaggerated as VP. It was really noticeable when she came back to Alaska a few weeks ago and sounded like she always did, which was noticeably different than the winkin', charmin' Jane Sixpack she has pretended to be.

The exaggeration of her folksiness makes the "she's so authentic" praise for her especially ironic, as does the $150,000 wardrobe and the expensive hairstylist and makeup artist.

- JEFF FREY

October 25, 2008 at 6:40pm

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tomeg, formidable politician? Sorry, don't see it. She is Governor of an out of the way (way, way out) with a population not even 3/4 of a million, flush with oil lucre. She beat a corrupt Governor (who appointed his own daughter to the Senate) based a lot on being a fresh and pretty face. There is nothing formidable about her rise to that position, and virtually every other Governor could claim more. Dan Quayle managed to get elected to the US Senate from Indiana, twice, but I doubt anyone has called him a formidable anything ever.

And as to her performance thus far, what is considered to be a good debut (but to me cloying and annoying, yeesh, that truckstop waitress voice) and from then very far downhill. Now people are impressed if she can string together a few sentences and make it sound coherent. She has not shown me she is smart, gifted, formidable or anything. She has simply shown me she has a nice face and body and can read from the teleprompter loudly enough to be heard.

Maybe she is smarter than I give her credit for, I never thought she was a dumb as those interviews with Couric, but I seriously doubt it. She is way over her head, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would be too, and I don't consider myself stupid. I simply could not deal with it. Lets not pretend that any other average person could (and that is all she is) as well.

- blackton

October 25, 2008 at 7:20pm

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This from the weekly standard:

And also for the pleasure of seeing the dejection of the mainstream media, the incredulity of the leftwing triumphalists, and the humiliation of the pathetically opportunistic "conservatives" who've been desperately clambering on board the Obama juggernaut. We're proud to stay off that juggernaut. We're proud, in our modest way, to stand with John McCain and Sarah Palin against it.

And I am damn sure how happy they will be to watch the dejection amongst the young, the poor, the minorities (especially the blacks). Got to keep them in their place don't you know.

How utterly unaware of America those assholes are there. one out of every three Americans is a minority, by midcentury minorities will be a majority. You bozos got to get with the times or the times will bury you. Running a white are us America is a lost cause.

- blackton

October 25, 2008 at 7:30pm

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Echoing Jeff Frey, my experience working in Alaska for a total of about 7 months over two summers tells me that to the degree that there is a whacky political ethos up there in the far north, it isn't defined so much by Bible-believing Christianity as by extreme libertarianism.  I ran into a lot of people who owned guns and knew how to use them to shoot large mammals, and I ran into a lot of people hatching schemes to exploit the state's natural bounty for profit, but other than the Moonies who at the time ran one of the larger fish packers on Kodiak Island, I didn't run into many religos at all.

A second or third hand story will give you the flavor: Dillingham gillnetter is doing something illegal, fishing during a closure or using illegal equipment or something.  He gets boarded by a fisheries officer.  He shoots said officer, binds his bleeding corpse in lead line and sinks him to the bottom of Bristol Bay.  Later on, the body washes up, gets tied back to the gillnetter, and he's tried by a jury of his peers for murder.  He mounts a self-defense defense, and, get this, he gets acquitted.  

- aeromonas

October 25, 2008 at 11:24pm

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tomeg-

I have to agree with Jeff Frey and aeromonas: Pentecostalism doesn't appear to be the norm in Alaska. As I noted in my post above, Palin left the Pentecostal Wasila Assembly of God in 2002, when she first attempted to run for state-wide office. This suggests that Sarah P was aware that her own whacky Pentecostal religion wouldn't play all that well with the Alaskan electorate.

In her current bid for VP, there are reports that the McCain campaign has instructed all of Palin's Pentecostal fellow travellers (her pastor, etc) not to speak to the media at all.

Palin must know, and McCain must know, that Sarah P's irrational religious views are only acceptable to the nutwing base of the GOP.

My own theory is that the reason McCain has refused to use Rev. Wright against Obama is that it would open the door to an all-out examination of Palin's religious beliefs. And while there is video of Rev. Wright--someone who was once close to the Dem nominee--making twisted religious pronouncements, there is video of the actual GOP VP nominee herself making whacky religious pronouncements, as well as video of Palin on stage with nutwing preachers, laying their hands upon her, while making bizarre Pentecostal declarations.

- JosephCuomo

October 26, 2008 at 1:45am

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Also to be remembered:  Mike Huckabee's Southern Baptists do not much like the Pentecostalists of Palin and Co.   Just as 2008 made for a Mormon-evangelical spit (which united the Pentecostals and non-charismatic evangelicals against the LDS, to some extent), there's the possibility of internecine skirmishing on religious lines in 2012, too.  In many ways, it's a question of style and respectability, not any difference on the political content of social conservatism.  I know from experience:  my immediate family and my mom's side were comparatively staid Southern Baptists, of the establishmentarian "First Baptist Church of XYZ" sort, while my dad's family were Pentecostalists, or backslidin' Pentecostalists. (My mother had, essentially, "married down.")  I wasn't allowed to get too close to the Pentecostalist side -- never went with them to church, etc.   It was scary stuff for a kid:  the world was gonna end *tomorrow*, if not tonight.  The Pentecostals are absolutely fixated on the End Times as prophesied in Revelation, which is for them the key book of the Bible, given much more emphasis than the Gospels.  (The Pentecostals were, in the final analysis, more fun and more real: they at least could admit they had sins to forgive, and they'd go out and commit 'em, get forgiven, and then go forth and sin some more, enjoying every bit of it, whereas the Baptists were the epitome of holier-than-thou.)

A question for all my fellows here (and please don't take it as condescending or anything like that -- I don't mean it that way in the slightest -- I'm just genuinely interested in finding out how much is known/not known about these religious dynamics among the readership of TNR):  y'all seem shocked, shocked by what JosephCuomo offers us in the long post above, and the videos seem new to many, whereas I'd seen them a while back, and my reaction was basically, "well, yeah, whadda you expect from an Assemblies of God congregant?"  I have been interpreting the base reaction to her (and it's a "base" reaction in more ways than one) as, in no small part, a celebration of the fact that this is the farthest a Pentecostal/CBN type has probably ever gotten in national politics.  So:  Is this explication of her theology and of her emotional orientation to what is presumed to be a direct divine intervention in politics really that new to most of you?  Does JC's (gotta luv those initials) text above come as a ... dare I say it ... Revelation?

- Illuminismo

October 26, 2008 at 2:53am

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A fair question Illuminismo.  I am a Deist, so almost all organized religion just looks like politics and sociology to me.

Most Western metaphysics in general seems like expressions of basic human yearning (love thy neighbor) meets mysoginy (virgin birth, a male superhero always at the center to save the day, etc).  I have my own relationship with the divine, which waxes and wanes, but mostly centers on remaining intellectually rigorous, living in  the moment and maintaining humility.

This isn't to say that I distrust all religious *people,* not at all, I have learned a great deal from many of them and even envy many.  I have often wished I was Catholic or Jewish because of my deep love for the people.  One of my all time heros of life is Gene Robinson, the heroic courageous humanitarian Christian Warrior of the Episcipalin Church, who has done more to promote what Jesus Christ really meant than any single figure in modern life. I would go so far as to say he is the only American figure to do so.  The rest seem like charlatans to me, and I mistrust them deeply.

I'll tell you why.  As most folks on these boards know, my Mom is an progressive evangelical Christian, recent in nature, perhaps 15 years ago.  The people in her church inspire me (although not enough to join any church) - they revolve their lives around what I consider to be the single most important document in Western history: The Sermon on the Mount.  

They focus entirely in good works, have no interest in electioral politics and disdain the spotlight.  They welcome and give refuge to all immigrants, regardless of immigration status, as they seem them as the embodiment of Jesus, Mary and Joseph - being hounded and loathed and looking for a manger in the night.

My problem with Palin and her ilk (Assemblies of God, whatever, they all look the same to me) is the same problem I have with all demogauges - they don't seem remotely of God to me.  They are using religion as an excuse to bully, to feed their ego and to control.  Their biggest sin of all is in having the gall to state that they know what God wants. Our foundng fathers would PLOTZ ;) This is the very opposite of what America was founded on.

I cannot tell you how much this offends me, do they even read he bible at all?   I never hear about the Sermon on the Mount from any member of the Christian Right.  Ever.  This is very telling.

I find them to be fundamentally dishonest and even evil for this.  I am sorry for that, I do not like feeling that way.  

So, after watching Sarah Palin's frightening arrogance,incuriosity, shocking mean-spiritedness, her compulsive lying - no, I am not surprised in the least.  She's the same as any religious fundamentalist on earth, she's interchangable with any mullah anywhere.

- Wandreycer1

October 26, 2008 at 12:18pm

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Illuminismo-

You write: "A question for all my fellows here. . . y'all seem shocked, shocked by what JosephCuomo offers us in the long post above. . . .  So:  Is this explication of [Palin's] theology and of her emotional orientation to what is presumed to be a direct divine intervention in politics really that new to most of you?  Does JC's (gotta luv those initials) text above come as a ... dare I say it ... Revelation?"

From what I've seen over the years, Illuminismo, in the comments of MSM journalists and pundits, as well as what I've seen in the comments of TNR staffers and Talkbackers, as well as what I've seen in the comments of people I meet at colleges or pools or parties, when it comes to Pentecostal and Fundamentalist belief systems, most people in this country have absolutely no idea, nothing, nada, zip, of what these systems entail.

Illuminismo, you also write: ". . .Mike Huckabee's Southern Baptists do not much like the Pentecostalists of Palin and Co. . . .  In many ways, it's a question of style and respectability. . ."

I would agree that there is a distinct difference between Pentecostals or Charismatics (like Pat Robertson) on the one hand, and Fundamentalists (like the late Jerry Falwell) on the other. And while the styles of these two groups do differ significantly, I would suggest that the differences  derive, in large part, from narrow, but significant differences in their interpretations of theology.  

As you probably know, Illuminismo (though most others reading this thread probably don't), both Pentecostals and Fundamentalists are dispensationalists, a form of millenarianism, or "premillennialism" (founded in 1830 by John Nelson Darby), which divides human history into distinct periods (or dispensations). We are, in the dispensationalist view, about to enter the end times, quite literally the end of the world, which will be preceded by a period of seven years of unprecedented horror, known as the Tribulation.

Within this dispensationalist belief system, there are two particulaly glaring differences between Pentecostals and Fundamentalists, one of which is that the former are usually post-Trib, and the latter usually pre-Trib. While pre-Tribs believe that they will be raptured out of this world (into heaven) before the Tribulation, Pentecostals (again, like Robertson) believe that they are going to have to live through the imminent (prophesied) seven years of horror, and so must prepare themselves (spiritually, but also quite literally) for a massive, prolonged, worldwide holocaust (ie, the confluence of vast, all-out warfare, famine, plague, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and more) lasting for seven long years (after which they will be raptured into heaven). Many survivalists, for instance, are post-Trib, and that is apparently what drives them to dig bunkers in their backyards, and to stockpile canned goods and gasmasks and weapons.

The other significant difference between Pentecostals and Fundamentalists is that the latter do not believe in extra-biblical miracles, and Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians do. These are people who believe in faith healing, the laying on of hands, the intervention of prayer (to move the path of a hurricane, for instance), speaking in tongues, and (among the wackiest of the wacky) snake handling. (It may also be the case that the Pentecostal belief in extra-biblical miracles derives from a need to know that God has armed them in this way, in order to be able to confront the imminent terrors of the Tribulation.)

As you suggest, Illuminismo, it always seemed to me that Fundamentalists (again, like Falwell) were actually embarrassed by the biblical excesses of Pentecostals.

But, yes, as you note above, there doesn't seem to be any major differences between the two groups with respect to the political agenda of social conservatism.

- JosephCuomo

October 26, 2008 at 3:38pm

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