Quote of the Day: Christopher Hitchens on the 2008 elections

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There is much not to like about Hitchens's latest self-important rambling at Slate -- notably his oft-repeated assertion that, in terms of the Iraq War, withdrawal is akin to surrender -- but he is certainly right about this:

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

Which is to say, the vast majority of the GOP should be "decisively repudiated," and that includes Palin: "It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her -- her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations -- were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses."

Indeed: "Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience."

Well put, Mr. Hitchens.