Palin-McCain in Arizona: Lose-Lose for the Conservative Movement

The disarray within the conservative movement is on full display for all to see these days. But I think the icing on the cake has to be the McCain/Palin lovefest that is currently happening.

Sarah Palin, considered by the Christianist conservative rightwing to be the next best thing since Joseph McCarthy for the patriotic Tea Party movement, is now chumming it up with a guy whom these very "Joe the Plumber" conservatives have lambasted as a RINO, a sellout, and a spineless joke whose management of Palin in the last Presidential campaign was excoriated as patronizing and stupid.

What makes it worse is that Sarah Palin is supporting McCain when there is a perfectly good patriotic, Christianist, Tea Party candidate challenging McCain in the GOP primary for the Senate. I'm not sure what Palin thinks she can get out of backing McCain (whom her supporters hate) over his primary rival (whom nearly all of the Palinites favor), but her alliance with McCain will certainly turn the stomachs of all her supporters.

Is Sarah Palin selling out the Tea Party? It sure seems like it to me, though I'd say that she never was a true believer to begin with, but merely the crass opportunist who will use true believers to sell books, raise her ratings on Faux News, and make her extremely wealthy in the process. But I bet the Palinite faithful are feeling a bit betrayed now by Sarah's willing coziness with and support of McCain, especially when she has the clout to tell McCain to go suck it without having to pay any kind of a price among her adoring fans for doing so.

The larger impact of this is really the continued unravelling of the conservative movement. I don't see how Palinites can continue to support her so enthusiastically when she's going around supporting McCain against a more conservative opponent that matches better what folks think Palin should represent. Likewise, I don't think moderate conservatives will look at McCain cozying up to Palin just to burnish his conservative credentials as all that appetizing either.

It's just a lose-lose alliance and I suspect the GOP and the conservative movement will just become more demoralized because of it.