McCain Drops Palin

Taps Well Known Fictional Sea Captain


Republicans line up to support “The Crunch Man” (Actual quotes, enhanced with a little Chicago tuck-and-roll):

"[S]He's the first journalist cartoon sea captain ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and [s]he was a sportscaster in commercials on local television," Gingrich said on the "Today" show. "So [s]he has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced [s]he is, for two years [s]he's been in charge of the Alaska National Guard a make-believe ship on a make-believe sea."

-- Newt Gingrich.

"It's a pretty amazing story of personal success, being at once a traditional woman sea captain who broke all of these traditional barriers, kind of the best of both worlds, if you believe in traditional values."

-- William Kristol

"Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda Captain Horatio Queeg Imaginary Crunch was picked because [s]he lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because [s]he seems so much like himself.

“Palin Crunch pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

"So my worries about Palin The “C” Man are not (primarily) about her lack of experience being his a completely fictional character. [S]He seems like a marvelous person. [S]He is a dazzling political performer."

-- David Brooks

"Congratulations to John McCain for hearing and responding to conservatives. Conservatives, the base of the party, have been listless. But, now, nearly all will work enthusiastically for the McCain- PalinCrunch ticket. In fact, this is the most enthusiastic conservatives have been since the era for Ronald Reagan… This is a grand-slam home run. Conservatives' feet haven't touched the ground since this announcement."

-- Richard Viguerie

“I see this woman salty, fictional character… holding a sockeye salmon bowl of toasted sugar, and I think, ‘I love you,’ ” Carlson, sans bow tie Monday, told the crowd during a breakfast panel discussion in downtown St. Paul.

-- Tucker Carlson

As a 44-year-old woman, Mrs. Palin trademarked product, Cap’n Crunch adds desperately needed diversity to the Republican ticket. But that's not her his main strength. It's her his conservatism that matters more. Like Mr. McCain, [s]he's an anti-establishment reformer who's taken on the corrupt Republican hierarchy in Alaska breakfast cereal cartel world-wide. [S]He's more conservative than Mr. McCain, balancing his maverick tendencies.

...
And should the McCain-Crunch ticket win the election, it will produce a huge change in the party itself. Mrs. Palin This animated mascot for a low-end, sugar-intensive cereal would become first in the line of succession to become the next Republican presidential nominee and would usher in a new generation of leaders.
...

Mrs. Palin Cap’n Crunch is no feminist. Instead, [s]he appeals to almost every conceivable grouping of conservatives. [S]He's pro-life on abortion, pro-gun ([s]he hunts), pro-drilling for oil (including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), and is as hawkish about cutting government spending as Mr. McCain himself. [S]He's also an evangelical Christian.

-- Fred Barnes

With the Palin Crunch pick, McCain stole from Obama the mantle of being the only history-making candidate this year.

…
I really do have tingles up my spine.

…
Kudos to John McCain for thinking so far out of the [cereal] box.

-- Mary Matalin

This is my sixth RNC, and I've never seen anything remotely like the excitement Palin The Crunchenmeister has unleashed. Some compare it to the enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan in 1976 or 1980. Even among the GOP's cynics, there's a kind of giddiness over John McCain's tactical daring in selecting the little-known Alaskan cartoon.

...
Readers of National Review Online -- a reliable bellwether of conservative sentiment -- flooded the site with e-mails throughout the long weekend. The messages ran roughly 20-1 in almost orgiastic excitement about the pick. On Friday, one reader expressed Christmas-morning delight over the gift of Palin, proclaiming that McCain had just "given us our Red Ryder BB gun."

-- Jonah Goldberg.

Listening to Fred Thompson tonight, I wondered, after thirty years of being ass-fucked onto the poorhouse and eight years of giant, flaming extinction level Republican catastrophes pounding their lives and dreams to atoms, who in their right fucking mind could possibly still fall for this D-Grade, grits-n-gravy “weez heah ‘r all just a’squirtin’ with smalltownvalues [all one word] pitted agin’ that buncha Establishment, Insider, Powerbroker crowd” horseshit being toweled out by this Party of Fuckup Plutocrats.

Man, he does luuurve hookin’ his thumbs into his gaiters and wheezing on about “the Washington crowd”

And then the camera swept across an oinking sea of brain-dead, over-fed Botoxed marshmallows in red white and blue uglypants and I am yet again reminded, oh, yeah, that’s who.