That retching sound you may have noticed over the past few weeks may go down in history as “The Revolt of the Janeites”—the announcement by Jane Austen-reading Republicans that they are not, goddamnit, going to vote for the likes of Sarah Palin, not as long as it looks like she’s going to lose, anyway.
So far the leading turncoats are David Frum, David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, and Heather Mac Donald. Heather, being a woman and thus freed from the necessity of being gallant, hits closest to home, basically accusing Sarah of being a bad mother. Her teenager’s knocked up, she’s skipped out on her disabled infant, plus she talks like, well, you can practically hear the damn gum twanging.
Heather, Chris, and both Davids are happily thumping themselves on the backs for having, at last, Taken A Stand. They loyally stood by Bush while he trashed the Constitution, lied us into war, doubled the national debt, and made torture a conscious, deliberate instrument of national policy. But now that they’re faced with a candidate who talks like a runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, all of a sudden they’ve got principles.
