Straining for Sarah

Politico brings the hathos this morning, with a piece co-authored by Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist entitled "Sarah Palin has earned the right to run for president."

Even without reading it I knew something was terribly amiss. Sarah Palin has every right to run for president, as does any American citizen over the age of 35 who was born on U.S. soil and lived in the country for 14 years. One doesn't earn rights. That's why they're rights and not privileges.

But that's not what the op-ed is really about:

But if she decides to, Republicans of all stripes should applaud her decision. This isn’t an endorsement of her candidacy. It is, however, an endorsement of her right to participate in the process....

In other words: shut up and line up.

I doubt even Norquist fully believes that serving as the mayor of a town of under 10,000 and governing the biggest welfare state in the union before quitting after two years to become a celebrity, actually qualifies Palin for becoming the most powerful person in the world. But by gum, she has to earn her right to run, so he's got to mention something. Norquist thus eats his vegetables as quick as he can with an obligatory two sentences and then talks about other seeming losers and talks about their right to run, again, as if that were at all in dispute.

He also doesn't mention Palin's extraordinary unpopularity, that Independent voters prefer Obama 2:1, nor does he mention that she has accomplished nothing but self-promotion since she walked out on her governorship.

There is a waft of desperation about the whole matter, as Norquist badly strains to adjust reality to a candidate whose continued public existence is unbelievable.