Think Progress has picked up on some great articles explaining why some of her statements sound so familiar: Palin has been embraced by neoconservatives as the vehicle to move their agenda forward. That includes tapping a long-standing neocon and former Executive Secretary of the National Security Council under W., Steve Biegun, as her foreign affairs trainer.
From the Telegraph:
A former Republican White House official, who now works at the American Enterprise Institute, a bastion of Washington neoconservatism, admitted: "She's bright and she's a blank page. She's going places and it's worth going there with her."
Newsweek also has a list of the Bush aides called in to move Palin from zero to hero in the weeks before the election.
TP's M. Duss has an assessment that is right on target:
In a way, neoconservatism is a perfect fit for Palin. It’s an ideology is built upon a reflexive skepticism toward scholarly expertise, tending toward more emotionally satisfying — not to mention politically profitable — policy answers than the boring, reality-based stuff offered by analysts who have spent their entire careers studying these questions. The presentation of Palin as a rebel reformer is of a piece with the neoconservatives’ presentation of themselves as rebel intellectuals, and resistance to their ideas is offered as proof of the corruption of American governing institutions, rather than proof that their ideas are just really, really dumb.
Palin’s simplistic, moralistic answers to complicated foreign policy questions shouldn’t be taken as evidence that she’s not smart, she clearly is. Rather, Palin’s simplistic, moralistic answers stem from the fact that neoconservatism is a simplistic, moralistic ideology, one unsuited for actual governance, as the last eight years should have demonstrated beyond all doubt.
A sometimes doddering president supported by an aggressive and moralistic VP who, in turn, is surrounded by advisers of questionable character and competence.
Sound familiar?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment