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The Republican message gets more and more muddled as time goes by. Of course, since 2008 the GOP has revolved entirely around Barack Obama, as a reaction to the president – and a knee-jerk reaction at that.

And because they limit themselves to attacking everything Obama likes, and because Barack Obama happens to be smarter than them, their message of hate lacks coherency. They regularly fall over themselves trying to get as much vitriol out as they can.

We can’t know, really, and we can’t know, how many of them are driven by the fires of fanaticism and how many of them are simply opportunists riding the populist wave. What matters is that the base (and a lot of other people) believe their drivel.

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A lack of coherency bothers liberals but the conservative base just wants a steady diet of having their preconceived prejudices confirmed and reinforced, and if there is one thing Republicans are good at it is packaging sound bites and created scandals. It’s not the content they care about, but the production values.

And [insert deep breath] speaking of production values and sound bites and drivel and a lack of coherency (and oh by the way the need to get the base stirred up for 2014), Sarah Palin – who has previously hinted that she might run for a senate seat in 2014, and who has hinted also that she might leave the GOP behind and create her own “Freedom Party” – has now pronounced herself a Rand Paul girl.

She told Fox News Saturday while ranting about Obamacare, “I’m on team Rand. Rand Paul understands. He gets the whole notion of ‘don’t tread on me government.’ Whereas Chris Christie is for big government and trying to go-along-to-get-along in so many respects.”

Keep in mind, there are no actual facts to be found in this claim, but it is neatly packaged, and, for Sarah Palin, remarkably coherent. Conservative listeners, who abhor nuance like nature abhors a vacuum, are awarded with what they like best: a neat black/white, either/or, good/evil equation.

Let’s take a look at that again, in case you missed it:

She loves herself some Rand Paul. Why? Because Paul has a “healthy libertarian streak that we need more of, in our politicians.”

I’m not sure at this point that you can use “healthy” and “libertarian” in the same sentence, given what we’ve seen of libertarian aims in this new century. And don’t tread on me government…I’m a little confused.

Would that be the “don’t tread on me government” inserting itself into our bedrooms with regards to what sex acts married couples can engage in?; or the one intruding itself on reproductive matters that should be the sole domain of the woman or the woman and doctor and/or significant other?; or the one that tells me what God to worship and how to worship him?

THAT “don’t tread on me government”?

It would sure be swell if Palin would “you betcha” clear that up for us, but she won’t, because that would be inconvenient and disrupt her faux anti-government spiel. The Republican agenda is not about making sense, remember, and for that – for pure misdirected nihilism offered with a smile and a wink (and the obligatory bosom) – they have found the perfect spokeswoman in Sarah Palin.

Nobody does it better than the girl who can see Russia from her back door but can’t see the moose she is aiming at or see that she is using the wrong kind of rifle to aim at said moose.

It is easy to see why Palin likes Paul. They’re on the same short-circuited wavelength, after all, playing with a half-understanding of what government is and what government must be if they’re going to get all the goodies they want for their states even while cutting it down to size. In other words, they’re both “half-thought-out” politicians who have let their populist agendas get in the way of actually thinking things through to their logical conclusion.

You know, with facts and everything.

And Chris Christie isn’t “rogue” enough for the so-called Mama Grizzly, meaning he isn’t over-the-top cray-cray like Republicans – especially Tea Party Republicans – have to be these days.

And in true face-palm style, she claims Christie is a slick phony anyway (rich coming from Ms. Soundbite, the promo-queen herself).

She says Christie has a “YouTube videographer” who sets up moments to capture the governor apparently – but not really – going rogue.

Some people look at him as, ‘Ah man, he’s a governor who goes rogue.’ No, he’s got a shtick going there where he’s got a YouTube videographer following him around, kind of these set up situations sometimes so he can be seen as perhaps going rogue. But Chris Christie’s for more government and his record proves that.

As opposed to the (Sarah Palin) type of more government that is going to intrude yourself into the bedrooms of married couples, and women’s private reproductive healthcare issues, and oh by the way, make sure you’re the right kind of Christian and not some atheist or pagan “libtard” who can’t be allowed to vote or hold office.

Because of course, you can’t go rogue if it’s a planned rogue-ishness. To go rogue you have to quit your job as the highest elected official in your state in the middle of your term, don’t you, Sarah? Or have a cameraman follow you around to show what a rogue huntress you are.

And of course, as Jason Easley related Saturday, it wouldn’t be Sarah Palin if she didn’t go entirely cray-cray and start ranting about “death panels” again:

Of course, they’re death panels. They couldn’t go forever and not acknowledge that or else they would look like complete buffoons — and they would be deemed incompetent having not read the law to understand that death panels are a part of this atrocity. It was just a matter of time. As more and more of our congressmen and women actually read the law and as more of us bring to light more things in the 20,000 pages of rules and regulations accompanying Obamacare, more of them will jump off the train wreck that’s coming.

This is more of what I talked about yesterday. Palin is not paying attention to the facts on the ground, because the facts on the ground do not agree with her preconceived notions and therefore must be ignored.

In fact, as RMuse reported here yesterday, Republicans are in full-blown panic mode over the success of Obamacare, thus their insistence that it’s a “train wreck.” They need to shoot it down before its proven just how well it works.

And at the beginning of August, opposed against, I suppose, the 40 times Republicans have tried to repeal Obamacare, barackobama.com listed 40 ways Obamacare is working. Looking at such a list, it is difficult to imagine what Republicans find so objectionable about people actually having access to medical care.

Personally, I’m a big fan of insurance companies not being able to tell me that because I have a pre-existing condition that I’ll just have to go off and die.

But facts or no, Palin is delivering exactly the sort of nonsensical diatribe Fox News was looking for – irrelevant and misdirected, wrath-laden filler to keep the base frothed up in between elections, feeding them a healthy dose of fear and fodder for their imagined self-victimization.

Yes, shallow as she is, Palin is precisely the sort of thing Republicans like: a pretty but vacuous face; someone who can convince perfectly average people on behalf of the people who are trampling their rights that somebody else is responsible for trampling their rights – someone who can pronounce evil with a smile.

Image from HollywoodReporter.com