Sarah The Healer

Sarah Palin is going to turn out to be good for the country. Her galvanization of those people susceptible to her appeal to their base instincts has drawn them into a concentrated mass that will make it easier to purge their infection of the mainstream.

Since they were not a large enough bloc to deliver victory, Republicans will no longer feel they have to sink to hate-mongering for survival. Most of them will be glad to be rid ot the stench and turn their attention to leading those people out of the swamp and back into a more healthy engagement with the issues.

Republicans will finally be free of the yoke of “values” issues, which, at best, forced them into hypocritical positions, pitting government against individual rights. As polling from The Barna Group (http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=319 [1]) has shown, the “Christian Right” is not a monolithic bloc, with support steadily evening out between the candidates.
In the most important way, the vitriol of the clot of low-information, surly Palin supporters, mistakenly referred to as the “Republican base” by slothful press, is the true legacy of GW Bush. For the moment I’m going to allow myself to believe that he did us a service by bringing the toxins of our society to the surface, so they can be isolated and the body politic healed.

This perspective gives me a pathway to a peaceful attitude toward my adversaries. I’m reminded of the Viet Nam days when the blue collar folks were riled into violent anger toward hippies and peaceniks. When the truth started to come out and right-wing stalwarts changed their positions, the hard-hats started smoking dope and growing long hair.