Way back in January of this year, I marveled at the coy overconfidence of SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford, who offered up to Politico this rhythmic response to reports that Sarah Palin's tentacles were wrapping their way around several influential Iowans:
"Have there been informal conversations between supporters on the ground in Iowa and with the PAC? Of course there have.
"Do we have supporters all across the nation? Yes.
"Do we have supporters in Iowa? Yes.
"Do those supporters want Sarah Palin to run for higher office? Yes, of course they do."
But oh how the unmighty have flatlined. She's now reduced to merely tweeting about world events: "Show photo as warning to others seeking America's destruction. No pussy-footing around, no politicking, no drama; it's part of the mission."
This fall from buffoonery's grace is, I write in all seriousness, a tragic episode in this nation's two-party course of events.
There thrives in the GOP a certain recycling of the lunatic elite -- if not Palin, then Santorum or Trump or Bachmann or Gingrich or ... -- which has accelerated and exacerbated in recent years, and which, further, will come to a full and decisive stop only upon a wholesale meltdown: that is, the nomination of a Palin for president, or a Trump for president ... you get my drift. And at this point it's evident that the singular withdrawal or diminution of a Palin, etc., from national GOP notoriety means nothing; there's always another unschooled guttersnipe ready and willing to take his or her infamous place -- simply because the equally guttersniping base is so ready and willing to embrace him or her.
The danger now, so to speak, in 2012, is the same as it was in 2008, only more intense. And that danger is that the party will nominate a reasonable, McCainlike presidential candidate such as Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney, and not a certified, lunatic guttersnipe such as Sarah Palin. The compromise candidate will then go down in competitive flames, yet competitive nonetheless -- the lesson of which will, characteristically, be misconstrued by the GOP base: If only we had nominated a real conservative. You know, an abject crackpot.
It would seem that what the GOP needs most -- and thus the health of the two-party system -- is a near-lethal dose of its own medicine. Allow the GOP base precisely what it wants, let it heap more lunacy on lunacies, let it choke down a 50-0 state loss, let it approach its nihilistic deathwish, let it glory momentarily in an ideological mushroom cloud before concluding that a return to Reason and its ejection of lunatics just might work a trifle better.
A Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels or Huntsman nomination will only postpone the inevitable and necessary. What the GOP needs, what will reboot the integrity of the two-party system, what will reclarify voters' fundamental choice between genuine conservatism and genuine liberalism, is nothing less than a thunderingly cathartic, pseudoconservative blowout: a Palin-or-some-such presidential nomination.