Millman on Palin

Noah Millman has some characteristically smart comments on the Palin nom, and I’d like to highlight one in particular:

Second, it is really striking how angry the anti-Palin voices are. I’m not going to link to Andrew Sullivan) because you know where to find him, but if you’re so inclined, check him out. It’s tempting to say the Obama partisans are angry because the pick is politically brilliant, and they are scared. I don’t think that’s most of it, though. I think most of it is refracted Bush hatred. Palin isn’t much like Bush, as far as I can see. (She’s more like Huckabee, another candidate who is manifestly not yet ready to be President but who I thought would make a great VP pick – and if Palin crashes and burns because she’s not ready for prime time, we’ll all have reason to regret McCain not picking Huckabee instead.) But I still think that’s the basis of the fury – she reminds too many people of how (they think) Bush was able to hoodwink a majority into voting against its own interests, and how they (the Democrats) were unable to counter that appeal.

This seems about right, if not about liberal reaction to George W. Bush in the specific, then certainly about liberal reaction to Republicans in general. It all goes back to Thomas Frank and Kansas: liberal Democrats can’t seem to fathom that social conservatives vote on issues other than simple calculations of how much money the government can send their way. For a much better riff on this than I could ever hope to compose, make sure to check out Grand New Party and the relevant passages therein.