Brooks: Sarah Palin "Represents A Fatal Cancer" On "The Republican Party"

If Brooks is saying stuff like this, it has to be pretty bad.

The sad thing about Brook's claim, however, is that it is almost certainly false: Palin is something like a cancer on the party, but she is hardly fatal. It would probably better for us all if any party that nominated such a laughably unqualified, intellectually underpowered and deeply unserious candidate fell apart. But that won't happen. Palin is a walking, talking refutation of a particular approach to American politics. She is something like a distillation of the rottenness at the core of the contemporary GOP. But she won't be fatal to it. Being stupid, being rotten, being morally corrupt, are not enough to make one unpopular or unsuccessful in politics. Many Republicans are, in fact, convinced that Palin is the party's future, its new Reagan. They're probably wrong, too. Palin will probably neither kill the GOP nor lead it into the future. But any party in which such a person can be so wildly popular is certainly in deep, deep trouble. Such a party might in fact survive, but it probably does not deserve to do so.