Setting Hair on Fire

Sarah Palin has always been a disgraceful opportunist, but I thought her comments on Tuesday's Hannity seemed to herald her triumphant arrival at a new low:

[Romney] has said before that he doesn’t want to have to light his hair on fire. Well, there are a lot of his base supporters, independents who are saying, "Well, light our hair on fire, then!"

And that was before she went on to characterize this election as being the "election of our lifetime." As PM Carpenter notes, there's a deviousness to her comments, and a creepy dishonesty:

She no more wants a Romney presidency than Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh does, since the profitability of playing defense is considerably less than that of a rancorous offense. Still, she perceives correctly: Mitt Romney has a monumental base problem--those inextinguishable doubts about his religion and policy convictions--which would seem to be insurmountable, even if marginal.

She's right, of course, that Mitt Romney has a serious enthusiasm crisis. Hardcore Republicans really do, to put it in my most elegant Palinspeak, want to have their hair lit on fire. But the fundamental dishonesty of her character is deeply troubling, particularly when one considers how close she came — quite close, in fact — to being not just vice president, but president.

(Image: "Sarah Palin and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaign in O'Fallon, Missouri Sept. 1, 2008." John Gress/Reuters, via the CS Monitor)