Archive for December 11, 2010

This is the first in a series of occa­sional posts that will (time and space per­mit­ting) present some of our best-​​loved “con­spir­acy the­o­ries” for dis­cus­sion. A par­tic­u­lar favorite of mine is the “Sarah Palin as neo­con sock pup­pet” theory.

In order to exam­ine this par­tic­u­lar the­ory in depth, we first need to define some terms. A “neo­con­ser­v­a­tive” is not, as many peo­ple seem to think, sim­ply an “über” or “ultra”conservative. In fact, neo­con­ser­v­a­tives are not really very con­ser­v­a­tive at all. They are quite con­tent with sweep­ing social pro­grams, Big Gov­ern­ment and mas­sive debt as long as those help them to achieve their pri­mary goal, which is win­ning elec­tions so they can pro­mote Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism and use the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary to export democ­racy by force. Neo­con­ser­v­a­tives, though gen­er­ally quite sec­u­lar and not inclined to mil­i­tary ser­vice, use both war and reli­gion to con­trol the populace…war because it whips up a sense of patri­o­tism, and reli­gion because it fos­ters a pub­lic fer­vency that helps them win elections.

One of the best-​​known and most influ­en­tial neo­con­ser­v­a­tives in Amer­ica is William Kris­tol, edi­tor of the Weekly Stan­dard, FOX News com­men­ta­tor and son of Irv­ing Kris­tol who was one of the founders of the mod­ern neo­con move­ment. Bill Kris­tol met Sarah Palin in 2007 when the National Review’s “con­ser­v­a­tive cruise” stopped in Alaska and some of the pas­sen­gers vis­ited the governor’s man­sion. Kris­tol imme­di­ately saw Palin’s poten­tial use­ful­ness to the neo­con cause, and began orga­niz­ing a cam­paign to move her into the upper cir­cles in Wash­ing­ton. From the article:

The most ardent pro­moter, how­ever, was Kris­tol, and his enthu­si­asm became the talk of Alaska’s polit­i­cal cir­cles. Accord­ing to Simp­son, Sen­a­tor Stevens told her that “Kris­tol was really push­ing Palin” in Wash­ing­ton before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29^th, two months before McCain chose her, Kris­tol pre­dicted on “Fox News Sun­day” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the gov­er­nor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fan­tas­tic,” say­ing that she could go one-​​on-​​one against Obama in bas­ket­ball, and pos­si­bly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s sup­port­ers. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The mod­er­a­tor, Chris Wal­lace, finally had to ask Kris­tol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

Imme­di­ately after Palin was given the VP nod, and in the two years hence, Kris­tol has been a con­stant booster of Sarah Palin, and has writ­ten numer­ous arti­cles and edi­to­ri­als in her praise, pas­sion­ately defend­ing her from attacks by “estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans.” This has been puz­zling to many who see vir­tu­ally noth­ing in com­mon between Kris­tol, the schol­arly ide­o­logue, and Palin, the fiery pop­ulist. But it’s per­fectly clear to any­body who pays atten­tion to polit­i­cal his­tory (and con­spir­acy the­o­ries.) In fact, the neo­cons have done this before: It was neo­cons who tapped George W. Bush and helped him reach the Oval Office, where they used him very suc­cess­fully to advance their ide­o­log­i­cal goals. Now they are attempt­ing to do the same thing with Palin, and to their delight they have found a politi­cian with all the same raw material…military hawk­ish­ness, an aver­sion to travel and study, a pow­er­ful ego, a “down-​​home” vibe and a strong appeal to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. The George Bush pres­i­dency offers a dis­as­trous tem­plate for what a Sarah Palin pres­i­dency (sim­i­larly con­trolled by neo­con ide­o­logues) would be like: big new social pro­grams designed to buy votes, a bal­loon­ing of debt, a decline in inter­na­tional sta­tus, a killing blow to the econ­omy and new wars open­ing costly mil­i­tary fronts in var­i­ous countries.

If you liked The Bush Years, you’re going to love The Palin Years, brought to you by the same pro­duc­tion company.