Republican Gomorrah

[Belthus]

Here is a book review I wrote for my blog (http://feteexpectations.wordpress.com/). I thought some of the people here might be interested.

Republican Gomorrah (http://www.republicangomorrah.com/), a new book by Max Blumenthal, examines the Christian Right's growth, its domination of the Republican Party, and the scandals of its prominent figures. Every group has its scandals, but what is intriguing about the Christian Right is that its scandals tend to involve exactly those behaviors that it most stridently denounces. Again, no party or philosophy has a monopoly on hypocrisy, but Blumenthal shows how core ideas are responsible for both the Christian Right's success and its problems.

Blumenthal bases his analysis on the work of Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst who left Germany after the Nazis came to power. In Escape From Freedom, Fromm wrote that having freedom is not always pleasant. Sometimes it can be a burden because you have to make your own decisions and you are responsible for the outcomes. Many people gladly give up their freedom by submitting themselves to obey without question a trusted authority figure. In the political realm, this can lead to a mass movement such as the Nazis created.

Christian theology has similar dynamics with respect to freedom. On the one hand, free will means you are responsible for your sins and will be punished for them - with hellfire according to the more conservative sects. However, there is an out. If you accept Jesus as your Saviour, all your sins are forgiven.

A modern twist involves the industry that offers therapy/treatment for personal crisis. People make mistakes in their personal lives or simply don't know how to handle certain things. So they turn to the therapy industry to tell them what to do about problems such as addiction, abuse, and infidelity. There is a promise that parallels the promises of political authoritarianism and religious salvation: obey the therapist and all your problems will be solved.

The Christian Right has put together all these modes of escaping from freedom into a single movement. A pioneer and the most successful practitioner has been James Dobson, a child psychiatrist who founded Focus on the Family. His newsletter gives advice about how to deal with problems in the family. His organization now gets so many requests for help that it has its own zip code. All these people mailing or calling in for help get put into a database, which is used to send out calls to political action. Dobson and similar figures function as what Fromm calls "the magic helper," who then exploits this dependent relationship to further both a political movement and their own finances.

Unfortunately, many personal problems cannot be prayed away or otherwise cured with a simple fix. These people become involved in the movement, which distracts them momentarily from their personal problems. However, problems such as addiction are still there and not being effectively addressed. This is especially true for gay Evangelicals, who believe that homosexuality is a sin, a personal choice ("lifestyle"), that can be cured by prayer and spiritual counseling. So gays, alcoholics, drug addicts, gamblers, and others lead double lives - preaching against the actions by day and overdosing on them by night. (I bet a similar analysis would apply well to the problems the Catholic Church has had with deviant priests.)

Viewed in this light, all the scandals involving Christian Right leaders - and the list is huge! - make sense. It also makes sense how the followers tend to forgive these lapses, and often the leaders are able to resume their leadership roles after a period of public repentance. Instead of seeing virtue as something that can be attained and maintained, it is a constant struggle, a war against Satan, and they expect (and have personally experienced) many setbacks. As long as the disgraced leader frames his personal failure in terms of a cosmic religious war, he is treated as a good soldier who suffered a wound in battle.

Although "faith-based" and "reality-based" approaches were coined in other domains, the terms also make sense in the area of personal problems. Most personal problems can't be solved in a single moment of insight; they have to be managed and moderated over years, maybe a whole lifetime. (And in the case of homosexuality, it isn't a problem in itself; the problem is the self-loathing and denial caused by the hateful position of the Christian Right.) Instead of a slow and steady course of treatment, the Christian Right has institutionalized an approach that almost guarantees a roller coaster ride, from euphoric highs of participating in a mass movement to self-loathing lows of indulgence.

[Belthus]

This looks like a "religion" book more than a "politics" book from your analysis.

It's both. The Christian Right has taken over the Republican Party, and the book gives the history of that takeover.

The problem with the Republican party is that they accept anybody regardless of their political views, where the Democrats don't tolerate anyone who does not toe the party line (for example: Joe Lieberman)

How has Lieberman been penalized? He is still chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. It was his choice to run as an independent after he lost his primary bid. I wish the Democratic Party had taken away his chair, but it didn't.

While both parties have politicians involved in scandals in near even numbers- the democrat party will defend their members and lean on the ethics panels to drop the case, while the republican party forces their politicians to resign.

Take Larry Craig. He was not forced to resign his Senate seat after being arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. He was allowed to serve out the rest of his term.

At a more serious level, Republicans who have committed Constitutional crimes, like Nixon and Iran-Contra felons, were pardoned by Republican Presidents.

Personally, I'm hoping the Republican party starts kicking out the so-called "moderates" such as Arlen specter (who fortunately already left) and John mccain, and starts standing up for it's principles- then maybe I'll have a party I can vote for.

That would be even more suicidal in a plurality voting system. The only space further to the right of the current Republican Party is extremely ugly--the people who stockpile ammunition and are waiting for a "race war." The Democrats have a lot more space to the left, and going there would provide an alternative. By world standards, the Dems are a center-right party.

[CB!]

You're finally on the brink of losing the dollar as the world's reserve currency and the rest of the world is tired of dealing with your economic and political s***. American exceptionalism is not one of the worst excesses of your national philosophy, but it is one of the most dangerous to yourselves, because it blinds you to the fact that the US is not, in fact, the greatest country in the world.

That's because we're moving further left as a nation.  The more conservative we've been, the bigger success and superpower we've been.  And I don't blame the rest of the world for wanting to get off the dollar.  I mean we've only betrayed everybody's trust in it over and over.  Gold/silver standard, passing a ridiculous stimulus package.  But America is still the biggest and quickest nation to rush to other countries' aid (tsunamis, earthquakes, AIDS, clean water, etc.).

[Daxx]

How has Lieberman been penalized? He is still chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. It was his choice to run as an independent after he lost his primary bid. I wish the Democratic Party had taken away his chair, but it didn't.

[They] wanted Lieberman gone because he did not toe the party line on every issue and they wanted to make an example of him.

If I didn't toe the party line, why would I expect to be accepted as part of the party? I mean, you wouldn't expect to see many Republicans running on an anti-war, pro-choice, interventionalist platform. That's how political parties work, in virtually every country - they cluster around common policy decisions. Unless of course you have a political system in which third parties have absolutely no chan... oh, wait.

That would be even more suicidal in a plurality voting system. The only space further to the right of the current Republican Party is extremely ugly--the people who stockpile ammunition and are waiting for a "race war." The Democrats have a lot more space to the left, and going there would provide an alternative. By world standards, the Dems are a center-right party.

That's a lot of misconception in a few words By constitutional and US history standards both modern democrats and republicans are far left.

But more-or-less everyone is further left, politically, than they were historically. That's why they use the terms progressive and conservative, because over time progressive politicians work to make society more liberal whilst conservative politicians tend to campaign on keeping the system the same (in the overwhelming majority of cases). Society advances and becomes more left wing. It's a historical trend.

But that's not what he was saying. Fundamentally the US is massively right-wing socially compared to basically everywhere else in the world. It's also massively more liberal (or "libertarian" since apparently liberal means the opposite thing in the US) on economic issues. The democrats would be considered a right-wing party in most of the west, and plenty of places elsewhere.

Economically- it is the freedom to pursue dreams without government dictating to us what we have to do, and the right to own property that allowed the US to grow into the economic superpower we are. There's a reason all the "leftist" countries in the world are relatively poor- the lack of freedom.

Yes there is a lot of room left for this country to move to the left. That health care hostile takeover that passed the house represents a huge shift to the left. I guess as a country we are looking enviously at the poverty of the rest of the world and working to emulate it.

You keep blowing that horn.

The United States have been an economic superpower because of a number of factors. Firstly, you inherited a lot of wealth from your status as a former British colony. Free and open land being exploited by those who could afford to do so is an excellent base to start a country's economy. Further to that, the US economy, infrastructure and legal system could develop on a more efficient basis due to being more modern. Aside from certain aspects of English common law and economic system, not much had to be grandfathered in. Further, the size and homogeneity of the population (as opposed to, say, Europe whose population is comparable but whose culture and politics was much more divided) allowed businesses to flourish much more easily and grow into larger economies of scale.

Then is the foreign policy aspect. Your isolationism protected you from the worst excesses of two world wars. Your manufacturing industry was not bombed out and the remainder converted to a war footing. You didn't have vast swathes of your population of healthy young men cut down in the trenches. After the wars, you didn't have to spend vast economic sums rebuilding your country. Since then, American Imperialism, protectionism in trade and aggressive foreign policy, as well as interfering with foreign governments and using your economic status to further leverage your advantages have allowed the US to maintain a dominant position even though for decades your industry has been failing and your economic policies have been disastrous. You're finally on the brink of losing the dollar as the world's reserve currency and the rest of the world is tired of dealing with your economic and political s***. American exceptionalism is not one of the worst excesses of your national philosophy, but it is one of the most dangerous to yourselves, because it blinds you to the fact that the US is not, in fact, the greatest country in the world.

[Evil Hamster]

This looks like a "religion" book more than a "politics" book from your analysis.

But since it's trying to be a politics book, look at reality-

The problem with the Republican party is that they accept anybody regardless of their political views, where the Democrats don't tolerate anyone who does not toe the party line (for example: Joe Lieberman)

While both parties have politicians involved in scandals in near even numbers- the democrat party will defend their members and lean on the ethics panels to drop the case, while the republican party forces their politicians to resign.

Personally, I'm hoping the Republican party starts kicking out the so-called "moderates" such as Arlen specter (who fortunately already left) and John mccain, and starts standing up for it's principles- then maybe I'll have a party I can vote for.

[Evil Hamster]

It's both. The Christian Right has taken over the Republican Party, and the book gives the history of that takeover.

They are a significant voting block, but they don't run the party. It's run by the same Goldman Sachs billionaire types who also run the democrat party.

How has Lieberman been penalized? He is still chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. It was his choice to run as an independent after he lost his primary bid. I wish the Democratic Party had taken away his chair, but it didn't.

I live in Connecticut so got all the battle between Lieberman and the democrat party. The party billionaires wanted Lieberman gone because he did not toe the party line on every issue and they wanted to make an example of him. They funded some Ned Lamont billionaire- He recieved millions from donors in other states like California (over 85% of his total "campaign contributions"). How that is even legal is beyond me- but that's another issue entirely. He also spent many millions of his own money- and in traditional democrat party tactics ran a massive smear campaign through the state. He ended up succeeding in buying a win in the primary- but then in the general election moderates and conservatives here said F O to lamont and Lieberman won as an independent. That was all way before anybody had even heard about Obama. I'm a conservative and I was happy to vote for Lieberman- even though I disagree with his politics. No other state should tell us here who to elect.

Take Larry Craig. He was not forced to resign his Senate seat after being arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. He was allowed to serve out the rest of his term.

At a more serious level, Republicans who have committed Constitutional crimes, like Nixon and Iran-Contra felons, were pardoned by Republican Presidents.

Larry Craig- was he the guy who got caught tapping his foot while taking a dump? I thought he did resign- I know not right away, but he did eventually. And both parties pardon their criminals. As for constitutional crimes, what about the Japanese rounded up into concentration camps here in the US during WW2- that was Rosevelt. Or the KKK- that was a democrat party political organization. There's even a sitting democrat senator whos a leading member of the KKK- sure he claims he resigned. Right.

That would be even more suicidal in a plurality voting system. The only space further to the right of the current Republican Party is extremely ugly--the people who stockpile ammunition and are waiting for a "race war." The Democrats have a lot more space to the left, and going there would provide an alternative. By world standards, the Dems are a center-right party.

That's a lot of misconception in a few words By constitutional and US history standards both modern democrats and republicans are far left.

What's wrong with stockpiling ammunition? The right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution. It was put in place specifically because an armed population would not allow a totalitarian government. That was the theory.

As for race issues- again look at history. It was the democrat party that kept and fought for slavery. The democrat party that seceeded to keep their slaves. The conservative republicans who went to war with the south to free the slaves. The democrat party that created the KKK to use terror tactics to prevent the freed slaves from voting republican. The democrat party that was responsible for Jim Crow and other segregation policies. The republican party that pushed for decades for Civil Rights legislation- because it was what the Constitution demanded.

Economically- it is the freedom to pursue dreams without government dictating to us what we have to do, and the right to own property that allowed the US to grow into the economic superpower we are. There's a reason all the "leftist" countries in the world are relatively poor- the lack of freedom.

Yes there is a lot of room left for this country to move to the left. That health care hostile takeover that passed the house represents a huge shift to the left. I guess as a country we are looking enviously at the poverty of the rest of the world and working to emulate it.

[Belthus]

NPR's Fresh Air did an interview with the author, Max Blumenthal: A 'Shattered' Republican Party? (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112683449) That page also has an excerpt from the book.

[CB!]

^^^

The gold standard was the restraint that kept us from printing more and more money.  The fact that no other countries are on the gold standard is irrelevant.  Can we aggree that a currency on the gold standard is a stronger currency?

I'm not saying that getting off the gold standard is the reason the dollar is at risk.  It was a move further left and allowed us to drive the value of the dollar down by inflating the system with more dollars.

[Daxx]

You're finally on the brink of losing the dollar as the world's reserve currency and the rest of the world is tired of dealing with your economic and political s***. American exceptionalism is not one of the worst excesses of your national philosophy, but it is one of the most dangerous to yourselves, because it blinds you to the fact that the US is not, in fact, the greatest country in the world.

That's because we're moving further left as a nation.  The more conservative we've been, the bigger success and superpower we've been.  And I don't blame the rest of the world for wanting to get off the dollar.  I mean we've only betrayed everybody's trust in it over and over.  Gold/silver standard, passing a ridiculous stimulus package.  But America is still the biggest and quickest nation to rush to other countries' aid (tsunamis, earthquakes, AIDS, clean water, etc.).

Are you kidding? I think you're mixing up correlation and causation. I just went through quite a lengthy post which details why the US has been successful in the past. It has nothing to do with how "conservative" you are, unless you count toppling foreign democracies to install your own US-friendly dictators, human rights abuses, and general unabashed imperialism.

Gold standard! Do you know anything at all about economics? You do realise no-one else is on the gold standard either, right? The dollar is dying because over the last several decades, primarily under Republican administrations (though both sides of the "fence" are to blame), the US has been racking up debt like no tomorrow, and creating huge budget deficits which leads to massive debt. Spending huge amounts of money on wars, cutting taxes for the rich, and generally making a hash of domestic spending tends to do that. You can only lean on a currency so hard even if it is the world reserve.

And, for the record, the US gives far less per capita than other nations in foreign aid, even if you count Israel and Egypt who get nearly a third of the amount, and allow for the political strings that the US typically attaches.

[Daxx]

The gold standard was the restraint that kept us from printing more and more money.  The fact that no other countries are on the gold standard is irrelevant.  Can we aggree that a currency on the gold standard is a stronger currency?

Actually, that depends on what you mean by "strong". If you mean "you can be fully confident in its worth, but monetarily speaking it is massively restrictive and allows for little economic growth and control over monetary policy", then yes. Frankly, the gold standard is such a terrible idea for a modern economy that I have to laugh when people with no idea what it would actually mean start talking about it as if it's some political point.

I'm not saying that getting off the gold standard is the reason the dollar is at risk.  It was a move further left and allowed us to drive the value of the dollar down by inflating the system with more dollars.

Getting off the gold standard isn't "left" or "right". It's sensible monetary policy. That's like saying that maintaining a central bank is "left" or "right".

I don't particularly want to spend ages going through basic economics, though I will if you are genuinely interested, but inflation is actually a natural by-product of a healthy economy. In fact, lack of inflation or worse deflation can stagnate growth and cause serious economic problems (see also: Japan). What has put the dollar at risk is not the transfer to fiat money, but piss-poor awareness of the global economic situation and massive deficit spending leading to over-borrowing which weakens the currency.

[Belthus]

Max Blumenthal, "The Rogue Way: How Sarah Palin Made Herself Indispensable While Destroying the GOP," (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175139/max_blumenthal_how_palin_became_a_rogue) Nov 15, 2009

Sarah Palin's heavily publicized book tour begins in earnest this Monday, but weeks before, her ghostwritten memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, had already vaulted into the number one position at Amazon. Warming up for a tour that will take her across Middle America in a bus, Palin tested her lines in a November 7th speech before a crowd of 5,000 anti-abortion activists in Wisconsin. She promptly cited an urban legend as a "disturbing trend," claiming the Treasury Department had moved the phrase "In God We Trust" from presidential dollar coins. (The rumor most likely originated with a 2006 story on the far-right website WorldNetDaily.)

In fact, a suggested alteration in its position on the coin was shot down in 2007 after pressure from Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Nonetheless, Palin did not hesitate to take up this "controversy," however false, since it conveniently pits a tyrannical, God-destroying, secular big government against humble God-fearing folk. In doing so, of course, she presented herself as this nation's leading defender of the faith.

In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grassroots, Palin's influence is now unparalleled. Through her Twitter account, she was the one who pushed the rumor of "death panels" into the national healthcare debate, prompting the White House to issue a series of defensive responses. Unfazed by its absurdity, she repeated the charge in her recent speech in Wisconsin. In a special congressional election in New York's 23rd congressional district, Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican politician, Dede Scozzafava, from the race. In the end, Palin's ideological purge in upstate New York led to an improbable Democratic victory, the first in that GOP-heavy district in more than 100 years.

Though the ideological purge may have backfired, Palin's participation in it magnified her influence in the party. In a telling sign of this, Congressman Mark Kirk, a pro-choice Republican from the posh suburban North Shore of Chicago, running for the Senate in Illinois, issued an anxious call for Palin's support while she campaigned for Hoffman. According to a Kirk campaign memo, the candidate was terrified that Palin would be asked about his candidacy during her scheduled appearance on the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Show later this month -- the kick-off for her book tour -- and would not react enthusiastically. With $2.3 million in campaign cash and no viable primary challengers, Kirk was still desperate to avoid Palin-backed attacks from his right flank, however hypothetical they might be.

"She's gangbusters!" a leading conservative radio host exclaimed to me. "There is nobody in the Republican Party who can raise money like her or top her name recognition."

During the 2008 presidential race, some Republican Party elders warned of Palin's destructive influence. They insisted she was a polarizing figure whose extremism would accelerate the Party's slide toward the political and cultural margins. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a card-carrying neocon who had written glowingly of Senator McCain, claimed Palin represented "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party." Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, blasted Palin as "a dope and unqualified from the start." Last June, Steve Schmidt, the former McCain campaign chief of staff, warned that Palin's nomination as the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee would be "catastrophic."

New polling data appears to support such doomsday prophecies. According to an October 19th Gallup poll, the former governor of Alaska has become one of the most polarizing and unpopular politicians in the country. Since she quit the governorship to pursue her lucrative book deal, a move that upset many in Alaska's Republican leadership and cost the state's taxpayers almost $200,000, her unfavorability rating has spiked to 50% while her favorability has sunk to 40%, again according to Gallup's figures. (The only nationally-known politician who is less popular right now, according to the poll, is John Edwards, the former two-term senator who fathered a child out of wedlock and paid his mistress hush money while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination on a social justice platform.)

Queen Esther

If Palin is indeed a cancer on the GOP, why can't the Republican establishment retire her to a quiet life of moose hunting in the political wilderness? Why has her appeal only increased in the wake of her catastrophic political expeditions? Why won't she listen to, or abide by, conventional political wisdom?

The answer lies beyond the realm of polls and punditry in the political psychology of the movement that animates and, to a great degree, controls, the Republican grassroots -- a uniquely evangelical subculture defined by the personal crises of its believers and their perceived persecution at the hands of cosmopolitan elites.

By emphasizing her own crises and her victimization by the "liberal media," Palin has established an invisible, indissoluble bond with adherents of that subculture -- so visceral it transcends any rational political analysis. As a result, her career has become a vehicle through which the right-wing evangelical movement feels it can express its deepest identity in opposition both to secular society and to its representatives in the Obama White House. Palin is perceived by its leaders -- and followers -- not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl who parachuted into their backwater towns to lift them from the drudgery of everyday life, assuring them that they represented the "Real America."

If McCain had taken his preferred choice for a running mate in 2008, he would have chosen Joseph Lieberman, the turncoat Democrat and his best friend in the Senate. But with the base of the Republican Party subsumed by a Christian right that detested the senator, his advisors urged him to choose the untested, virtually unknown Alaskan governor to bring the faithful back to him. Their gamble paid off -- at least in the short-term. When Palin was revealed as the vice presidential nominee at an off-the-record gathering of the Council for National Policy, a secretive cabal of the conservative movement's top financiers and activists, Tom Minnery of the Christian right outfit Focus on the Family recalled, "People were on their seats applauding cheering, yelling… that room was electrified."

Before her nomination, the provincial Palin had traveled outside the country only once and demonstrated little, if any, intellectual curiosity. During the campaign, she was flummoxed when CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric simply asked what magazines she read. Yet the fact that she had such a limited understanding of the world actually recommended her to the Republican base.

The gun-toting, snowmobile-cruising former beauty queen became an instant cultural icon. Little understood by those outside this culture was her religious worldview, cultivated during the 20 years she spent worshipping at the Wasilla Assembly of God, a right-wing Pentecostal church in her hometown north of Anchorage. When I visited the church in October 2008, a pastor from Kenya, Bishop Thomas Muthee, was at the podium comparing Palin to Queen Esther, the biblical queen who used her wiles to intercede for her people. The reference was clear enough: Palin, the former beauty pageant contestant who had chosen Esther as her biblical role model when she first entered politics, would topple America's secular tyrants, leading her people, the true Christians, into the kingdom. As he concluded his sermon, Muthee gesticulated wildly and spoke in tongues, urging parishioners to "come against the spirit of witchcraft as the body of Christ."

Three years earlier, in 2005, Muthee had anointed Palin during a public ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God, laying his hand on her forehead while praying to protect her "against all forms of witchcraft." The bishop claimed that he had personally battled a witch in his hometown of Kiambu, Kenya, driving the evildoer from the town and thereby ending an epidemic of crime and licentiousness. The episode was later revealed as a farce by a reporter from Women's eNews who traveled to Kiambu and found the supposed witch, a local healer named Mama Jane, still living happily in her compound. In palling around with Muthee, whom she credited with helping propel her into the governor's mansion by anointing her, Palin revealed herself as an authentic religious zealot. Whatever her flaws might have been, this was what mattered to the movement in 2008 -- and what matters now.

Once Palin was nominated, her sixteen-year-old daughter Bristol (named for Bristol Bay, Alaska) became the subject of ferocious media scrutiny. She had, it turned out, been impregnated by Levi Johnston, a local eighteen-year-old jock who identified himself on his MySpace page as "a f**kin' redneck." To media outsiders, Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy was particularly startling, given Palin's advocacy of abstinence-only education. In the eyes of many liberals, Palin had been revealed as but another family-values hypocrite, but to members of the Christian right, she was something quite different -- a glamorized version of themselves. As the Palin family became a staple of late-night comedy monologues, Palin fought back against the secular enemy, slamming David Letterman for "sexually perverted jokes" about her daughter. With that, the movement's adulation for her overflowed.

The Culture of Personal Crisis

Palin's daughter's drama caught vividly a culture of personal crisis that defines so many evangelical communities across the country. That culture is described in a landmark congressionally funded study of adolescent behavior, Add Health, revealing that white evangelical women like Bristol Palin lose their virginity, on average, at age 16 -- earlier, that is, than any group except black Protestants.

Another recent study by sociologists Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner notes that over half of evangelical girls who have pledged to maintain their virginity until marriage wind up having sex before marriage, and with a man other than their future husband. Bearman and Bruckner also disclose that communities with the highest population of girls who attend so-called purity balls, where they vow chastity until marriage before their fathers in a prom-like religious ceremony, also have some of the country's highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases. In Lubbock, Texas, where abstinence education has been mandated since 1995, the rate of gonorrhea is now double the national average, while teen pregnancy has spiked to the highest levels in the state.

"So many families deal with the same issues Sarah Palin is dealing with, so we really can relate to what she is going through," Grace Van Diest, a middle-aged Alaskan delegate from Wasilla, told me on the floor of the 2008 Republican National Convention. Van Diest then described how each of her daughters went on "a date with their dad" to discuss their pledge to "keep themselves pure until marriage."

Palin consolidated her bond with the movement in another very personal way. She cradled her new son Trig, born with Downs Syndrome, before the klieg lights. Her husband Todd had chosen the name believing it was Norse for "strength." ("Trygg" actually means "safe" or "reliable" in Norwegian.) Palin's decision to carry the baby to term excited many evangelicals and anti-abortion activists, including James Dobson, who wrote a letter congratulating her for having what he called "that little Downs Syndrome baby." "What a way to emphasize your pro-life leanings there!" he exclaimed during a radio broadcast in which he endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket, even though he had denounced McCain as a "liberal" only weeks before.

After the market collapsed in the fall of 2008 and the McCain campaign ran off the rails, Palin untethered herself -- as her book title has it, she went "rogue" -- ignoring McCain's rules on attacking Obama. Instead, she lashed out at candidate Obama in her own distinctive way. "This is a man who launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist," she insisted. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America." With these two lines, apparently uttered without the permission of McCain or his top aides, Palin opened up a deep schism within the campaign, while unleashing a flood of emotions from the depths of the Party faithful.

"Kill him!" a man shouted at a campaign rally in Clearwater, Florida, when Palin linked Obama to terrorism, according to Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank.

The next time she mentioned Obama, another man cried out, "Terrorist!" "Treason!"

"Go back to Kenya!" a woman typically screamed during a Palin rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

While Obama entertained visions of a blissful post-partisan, post-racial America, Palin almost single-handedly gave birth to the birthers who would, after his inauguration, dedicate themselves to proving he was not, by birth, an American. By "going rogue," Palin instinctively and craftily propelled her ambitions beyond Election Day, and so anointed herself as the movement's magical helper in the Obama era.

Elevated by yesterday's man, Palin now represents her Party's future -- and the greatest danger it faces. Her intimate bond with the Republican grassroots has made her the indispensable woman, even if she provokes a visceral sense of revulsion from many independents and moderates. Other Republican frontrunners like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty have a debilitating problem to face in any race for the presidency: they are viewed as inauthentic candidates by the movement -- cardboard men in suits who are only pantomiming appeals to cultural resentment.

Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister who understands the nuances of evangelical culture, nonetheless bears the burden of being a 2008 primary loser. At that time, the former governor of Arkansas had a clear field when it came to the religious right, but was unable to expand beyond his Southern bastions of support.

Palin was, after all, chosen. She never lost a primary -- and it was McCain who lost the race. If Huckabee sought to run again for the nomination, he might have to compete against her for the allegiance of the evangelical constituency.

Nor can she be easily criticized. Palin is so well positioned as the darling of the movement that any criticism of her would be experienced by believers as a personal attack on them. In this way, their identification with her through the politics of personal crisis is complete. Any Republican primary challenger assailing Palin will be seen as victimizing her, as channeling the attacks of the liberal elites, and possibly as having a secret liberal agenda. On the other hand, to embrace her is to risk losing the great American center.

For the 2010 mid-term elections, Palin's endorsement is already a coveted commodity -- as Mark Kirk's desperate bid to secure it demonstrates. The more she is attacked, the more the Republican base adores her. As she sets out on her book tour, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only propel her forward. Her influence on a party largely devoid of leadership is expanding. If she doesn't prove to be the Party's future queen, she may have positioned herself to be its future king-maker -- and potentially its destroyer. You betcha.