The dead pitbull bounce

The latest NYT/CBS News poll gives evidence that America has regained its senses, having caught a whiff of the Palin-McCain roadshow, a burlesque that has rendered parody superfluous.

Moments ago, the breathless "Friends" of Fox and Friends touted Alaska governor Sarah Palin's having "taken a question" at an event yesterday. More than two weeks after Palin was cynically plucked from cryogenic obscurity, it's actually big news that Palin has "taken a question" — from the Fox and friendly Republican faithful.

The question concerned Palin's demonstrated ineptitude in foreign affairs. “If you want specifics with specific policy or countries, go ahead and you can ask me, you can even play ’stump the candidate’ if you want to," came the reply.

Needless to say, it didn't happen. A bit later, however, Spanish reporters got to play it with John McCain, who got stumped badly, by proving either he doesn't know who the prime minister of that country is, or else he's still pissed off at the Spaniards for suffering one of the worst terrorist attacks in European history.

The NYT/CBS News poll shows the overall national figures returned from whence they stood pre-party conventions, along with some other unsurprising results. To wit, that "Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters" and marked "concern about Ms. Palin’s qualifications to be president."

It also demonstrates that a large majority of Americans are hip to McCain's cynical chicanery: "75 percent said they thought Mr. McCain had picked Ms. Palin more to help him win the election than because he thought that she was well qualified to be president."

And, perhaps most importantly, that McCain is "widely viewed as a 'typical Republican' who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies." McCain, a member of Congress for nearly 27 years including the chairmanship of some its most powerful finance committees, is now trundling around the country claiming that he is best suited to fix the very crisis he and his top economic advisors helped create.

De-re-de-regulation, or something.

Furthermore, the oft-repeated Republican trope that Palin is to win the support of "white women" is a farce, despite the best efforts of non-elite members of the Rothschild family of international bankers.

Meanwhile back in Seward's Folly, whose governor conducts official business from a Yahoo! e-mail account, teams of Republican lawyers were airlifted in to block an abuse of power investigation with which but scant weeks ago Sarah Palin had pledged to fully cooperate.

Goodbye to all that.

In a remarkable repudiation of federalism, a constitutional principle to which McCain has repeatedly expressed undying devotion, attorneys representing his presidential campaign have taken control of a bipartisan State legislative inquiry, and McCain's fixers actually have the gall to blame the legislature's conduct on Barack Obama.

And some of the lawyers were supplied by an outfit affiliated with Colorado religulous nut James "Satan Drives a Porsche" Dobson.

Americans are not as dumb as McCain spinmeister Tucker Bounds seems to be counting on, and the Palin-McCain carnival will most likely continue to prove how wrong he and the rest of them are.