I continue to be mystified by the Sarah Palin love-fest and the Sarah Palin hate-fest. Clearly, she’s touched a nerve with the conservative grassroots and set off at least some lefty bloggers and commentators.

To my mind this doesn’t change anything. But then, I wasn’t the target audience for this move. McCain is still McCain, and the GOP is still the GOP. Daniel Larison and Jim Henley elaborate.

I am surprised to see so many paleo-cons, “crunchy” cons, etc. warm up to the McCain-Palin ticket. Palin is “one of us,” I’ve seen people say. And the attacks on her (though exaggerated in my view), simply show the disdain that the “liberal elites” have for “real” Americans. Never mind John McCain’s horrible (from their perspective) positions on everything from Iraq to immigration.

As someone who had hopes that a cross-ideological common ground could be found between more traditionalist conservatives and some elements of the left on issues like war, civil liberties, executive power, the environment, and a sustainable ecomomy, this is a bit dispiriting.* But maybe that was always an exaggerated hope anyway. Maybe this just shows that cultural issues still run deeper than most anything else.
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*Not that there aren’t good reasons to mistrust the Dems on these issues too.