see, if we look at the map, I’m leaving to go over here

First off, I want to say I get it. We conservatives, much less Republicans, are in exile. The Democrats have a stranglehold on the House, the Senate became filibuster proof with a hack comic, and the party of Pelosi now occupies the White House.  I am frustrated and I am mad; however, the focus of my ire is not on the Democrats but on the fools that have run our great party into the ground. To paraphrase and adapt the words of the great charlatan, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, “We want out the Bushes!”.

And in our frustration, and desperation, we yearn for a guiding light. As in all aspects of life, desperation clouds judgment. Because of our predicament and present complete failure as a party, we reach. And reach. And reach.

What we have found is an initially charismatic individual, a governor from a small yet strategically important state, who generated buzz around a party nominee who otherwise made us ponder fondly the excitement surrounding Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign.

Then, as in all things Republican, you get out the Ronald Reagan ruler, the gold standard by which all pols residing on the right side of things are rightly measured.  Comparisons have abounded in recent days about how Sarah Palin is conservative “just like Ronald Reagan”, that the media elite sneer at her like they did Reagan. Or, that she is being shunned because she is not of the “establishment”.  Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan says it well in the Wall Street Journal

“Turning to others means the media won!” No, it means they lose. What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand, with her mess and her rhetorical jabberwocky and her careless causing of division. Really, she is the most careless sower of discord since George W. Bush, who fractured the party and the movement that made him. Why wouldn’t the media want to keep that going?

(there’s more – read through the link). As a Republican who very much wants to win and regain our rightful place as the governing party of this great nation, I shudder that my compatriots are with great gusto throwing every ideological egg they own into the skipping movement that is Palinade.  It’s going to skip us right off the cliff, waving that conservative flag all the way down to the canyon floor.

The Reagan/Palin comparisons need to be debunked for many reasons, but primarily they are an insult to the fortieth president and a recipe for forty additional years in the wilderness. Through a lifetime, Ronald Reagan amassed a record of great achievement. From the near-beginning when he headed the Screen Actors Guild and established a strong anti-communist, tough managerial stance, to his years as the highest paid, most well-known speaker in the world, to his two terms as governor of the nation’s largest state, Reagan’s credentials were unmatched. Perhaps because our country just elected a man with less experience than the soon-to-be former governor of Alaska, our party politic seems to have forgotten there are two aspects to one’s political resume – one’s ideological positions and the beef one brings to the table. Neither is expendable, and just because we have witnessed an anomaly in the process with the election of our current president, we ought not be so eager to set the beef bar so low.

It should bother everyone that Sarah Palin could not finish even one term as governor of Alaska, a position of public trust she treats as if she got through Randstad.  Yes, she was facing ethical accusations. Yes, she would have had to technically finance her own defense if it came to that (believe that one if you want).  So, instead of serving the state by confronting and ridding the people of the irresponsible politicians making baseless accusations against her, she does what any movement leader ought to do in her first term in a constitutional position: she quits. It is not a noble path, to be sure, but it’s the standard we as a party seem willing and eager to accept.

Let us also not forget she could not answer the most basic policy questions in any of her interviews, or cite any authors of substance when asked. Neither is very Reaganesque of her, whose knowledge of foreign policy and history was extensive and unquestionable. When Reagan faced adversity in California, he defeated it. When Palin faced adversity in a state smaller than San Jose, she took out the white flag, a couple crayons, and tried to shade it in like the Stars and Stripes.

And we as a party are supposed to rally around that? I don’t think so.