Wow. Was not expecting this. First, a David Brooks quote below the fold.
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices
.
Jay Carney over at Time has another e-mail from a high-ranking Republican party professional:
Fascinating.
She really is what Bush pretends to be -- she 's a true anti-intellectual. She's has this very Pentecostal view of the world. We don't need to study the Bible, we don't need ministers, we can just feel the spirit and let the spirit speak through us. It's this classically Alaskan value system that places experience over all other values. I know what mothers need because I am a mother.
We don't need to read or even learn because that just fills our heads with confusing ideas and facts and figures. We feel.
Bush plays at this anti-elite stuff but he's Harvard/Yale/Andover, all of that. She is really a celebration of a glorious know-nothingness that is truly dangerous....
She's terrifying and represents a streak of the Republican party that is a permanent minority. She will not play well with suburban women in Montgomery County [OH]. They want their kids to go to good schools and college. Palin basically says that isn't necessary. You can just speak plainly from the heart and that's good enough. But that's how you end up a fish picker from Alaska.
It's not that she is an idiot that bothers me. It's that she celebrates non-learning and anti-knowledge. She celebrates ignorance.
Terrifying.
I'm at a loss for words. Worse than Bush. I never thought I'd say that, and to hear Republicans saying as much. Wow, just wow. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but at a time when we've let a strain of anti-intellectualism practically ruin our country, we simply can NOT afford to let this woman anywhere near the White House. I can't even fathom the consequences. It scares the shit out of me.
After reading these quotes, I'm more determined than ever to work my butt off for Barack over the next few weeks. For the sake of the country, we have to win.