The Lady, or the Tiger?

Maureen Dowd, who will likely change her clothes, hair, and mind at least seven times today, quotes William Kristol (keep spinning in your grave, Irving) in today's NYT as saying:

“Conservative eggheads are my friends, but politically they’re a contrarian indicator. If they’re down on Palin, things are looking up for her. With all due respect for my fellow eggheads, they are underestimating the importance of a natural political gift or star quality. It matters a lot.”

Politically, intellectuals are a "contrarian indicator"? (I think Kristol meant "reverse barometer," but hey, who am I to argue? He's a "conservative intellectual"!) Does he actually intend to say that the opinions of intellectuals (like himself!) are the exact opposite of the truth, as far as Republicans are concerned? Then why do they exist? Party of Ideas, my monkey fucking ass!

David Brooks, Christopher Hitchens (I don't really know if he fits as a "conservative intellectual, " but nobody knows what that guy is anymore, and he supported Bush when it mattered), the Buckley clan, George Will, and numerous other conservatives have jumped off the McCain and (especially) Palin bullet train to oblivion. In some cases, those same "conservative intellectuals" have been savaged as they fled by the comfortable-but-ignorant rank-and-file of their party, those "ordinary Americans" who selfishly want to keep just a little more of the money they only could have made in America; who want to live just a little further away from the "Others" they only could have met in America; who, in a cycle of psychotic dissociation only found in America, want to punish whole segments of the population through venal small-government policies even as they continue to utilize big-government services and enjoy the fruits produced by the despised demographic populations.

In other words, the GOP, right now, is a mob-rule party. The party has assumed, with the adoption of the totem Sarah Palin, its most animalistic and base characteristics as its public image. And William Kristol, who fancies himself to be smart, at least, thinks he can ride the tiger. I just hope I'm there when he loses his grip and gets eaten alive.