It is encouraging to see more and more honest conservatives asking themselves hard questions about the candidacy of Sarah Palin and its dumbing down of their party and movement. Some are more honest than others, of course. Clearly David Brooks understands why Palin could be a “fatal cancer” for the Republican Party, but for publication he can’t quite muster the bracing forthrightness of the City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald (h/t to the Daily Beast). Poor Heather simply can’t bear to listen to the hockey mom any more:
“I know, it’s elitist to expect a candidate for president or vice president to speak like an adult… It’s even more elitist to expect a vice president to put together sentences that cohere into a minimally logical progression of thought. There was a time, however, when conservatives upheld adult standards—such as clarity of speech and thought—without apology, even in the face of the relentless downward pull of adolescent culture. But now, when a vice-presidential candidate talks like a teenager, mugs like an American Idol contestant, and traffics in syntactical dead-ends and non sequiturs, we are supposed to find her charming and authentic.”
