Real or Imagined

Unless she starts putting together a legitimate run for president in 2012 (which I seriously doubt), I don't want to waste too many words on Sarah Palin, about whom I adopt the "don't encourage them" policy taken with rambunctious children. But given the news that her quickie book is now due out in mid-November, Andrew Sullivan offers as concise a summary of her as I can imagine:

I think she perfectly represents a form of protest cultural politics that has no interest in actually governing. And what's fascinating about the various quotes from local GOP machers is that none of them refers in any way to policy. She is not supported because of what she allegedly believes, or what she says she'll do. She is supported because she shares an identity, real or imagined, with white, angry alienated conservatives. She is identity politics personified. And so the loony right's transformation into a mirror image of the loony left of the 1980s accelerates.