Sarah Palin Sucks the GOP Dry:
Imagine, if you will, the Republican candidates, announced and unannounced, gasping to breathe in a small glass room with only one tiny pipe that pumps a stream of air to whomever is sucking on it. Now let us say, and why not, that a sentient machine is in charge of who gets to suck on the air pipe. That machine is a meter that measures ratings for television news networks, your CNNMSNBCFox hydra. Yesterday, Memorial Day, if you were watching a video feed from that room, you would have seen horrors.

You would have seen Tim Pawlenty, rolling on the ground, gasping, as he spent the day in Iowa, scarfing down pancakes with people at a breakfast in Waukee and then at a cookout in...oh, who the fuck cares. At one point, T-Paw was overwhelmed by "eight Iowans gathered in a semi-circle at a bakery in one of the more conservative pockets of the state." Yes, yes, the red faced Pawlenty would be on that video feed, wondering why he must do without precious oxygen.

You might have seen Michele Bachmann on her knees, close to passing out, as her eyes bulged and she pounded the glass, seeking mercy from the merciless machine (for, indeed, sentience does not give one a conscience - just ask Dick Cheney). In New Hampshire, she gave a speech where she said something idiotic and then she spoke "to dozens of GOP activists on the lawn of failed gubernatorial candidate Karen Testerman," which she must have done to be ironic.

Over in the corner, you'd have seen Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, already passed out, pissing themselves, having done nothing more than issue statements praising the troops and America and freedom and family and Facebook.

Chances are that you heard about none of these yesterday because the ratings machine deigned that only one person could suck on the air pipe. Yes, dressed in a black helmet and black leather jacket and posed on the back of a motorcycle on the way to a bus that she's probably not even riding in to surprise stops o' history, Sarah Palin not only huffed that pipe (and all the emissions therein), but she gobbled that fucker like a champ, like a young starlet blowing Louis B. Mayer for a bit part in a Busby Berkeley musical, stealing air from fellow Republicans, from veterans, from the crazy POW/MIA-loving chumps in the Rolling Thunder thundering roll into DC.

Yeah, whether she runs or not, Palin owns the GOP, and she knows it. Supportive media will follow her because of the backwards ass people who love her. Other media will follow her to be there when she inevitably fucks up. Either way, though, no matter how much money they're raising, no matter how many YouTube videos or Facebook updates or tweets the rest of the Republican field puts out, there's only ever enough air for Sarah.