The GOParadox

Despite everything, the Republican Party's playbook still revolves around calling the Democratic platform, Democrats themselves, and even their professions as weak, cowardly, effete, tame, and impotent. No matter that the Republican party INCREASED the size of government in the last eight years, increased spending, increased the deficit, distracted the entire globe with its ill-designed version of a terror war (terror war was necessary, but not this one), has tried to use wedge issues like same-sex marriage and abortion to divide the country.

You didn't hear a lick of the Republican-esque vitriol at the Democratic convention. Almost everyone who spoke went out of their way to honor McCain's service to the country. In 2004, Republicans refuted, avoided, and even dispatched deep-pocketed thugs to discredit John Kerry's service to the country. Republicans have not put "country first" in years, and they're certainly not doing it this year. John McCain's address Thursday night was the most disingenuous, dishonest, misleading 45 minutes I have seen during this election cycle.

Sarah Palin's address, on the other hand was the most honest, accurate depiction of the state of the Republican Party I had seen in years: angry, bitter, vitriolic, sarcastic, dismissive. The only disingenuous aspect of that address was its "toughness": her speech was, in fact, weak, cowardly, effete, tame, and impotent because it simply set out to impose a false sense of impending doom, and to rattle the GOP base by puffing themselves up while putting down more than half the country.