Keep them laughing, Sarah - all the way to another round of losses

By Richard K. Barry

I will admit that once upon a time I was foolish enough to take Sarah Palin's comments seriously. I shouldn't have. No one should have. But there she was getting all this press coverage and many of us were paying attention. 

We figured it out. We stopped caring. But it is somewhat embarrassing to admit to how may keystrokes were devoted to this little Alaskan twit. 

Now I just find her funny, in an extremely pathetic, headshaking kind of way. For example, in her CPAC address last week she said this:

More background checks? Dandy idea, Mr. President. Should've started with yours.

Very clever. 

She's obviously talking about President Obama's gun control proposal, which calls for background checks for gun purchasers. She might want to note that a Quinnipiac University poll conducted Feb. 27 to March 4 found that 88 percent of respondents, including 83 percent of Republicans, favor background checks for all gun buyers. But that would require living in the world of facts, a place she has never even visited. 

Her short snarky comment was no doubt what she would have considered a two-fer. Not only is it an idiotic criticism of a view held by the vast majority of Americans, but it is a continuation of the Breitbartian meme that President Obama has still not been properly vetted. Two elections latter and these fools continue on with the same nonsense.

The only thing that makes Sarah Palin interesting is the extent to which a subset of the Republican Party takes her seriously, and the extent to which this very poorly informed, breathtakingly irrational, but impassioned, subset can influence primaries and therefore candidate choice. 

It's a numbers game that the GOP insists on losing.