Andrew Sullivan on Palin

The uber-blogger's post makes a terrible point:

The important thing for today's Republicans is that the leaders evoke the kind of cultural identity of evangelical Christians, regardless of their competence or knowledge or even interest in, you know, governing. You pick a candidate because of her gender and religion and recent baby, even if she has no record of even any opinions on foreign policy and the only opinion you can actually find opposes the critical plank of McCain's war "strategy."

This is actually what makes me nervous about the Palin pick (nervous in the sense that I love all things Joe Biden): it's marketing. Palin evokes a definite "cultural identity," and that will work with large segments of the population. Because it's the same cultural identity that elected a bumbling governor in 2000 and then re-elected him as a very unpopular president in 2004. Criticize "todays Republicans" over this all you want, but don't think for a second they don't know what they're doing. They surely do.