In defending Sarah Palin, Norman Podhoretz raises that old nostrum from William F. Buckley Jr.:

When William F. Buckley Jr., then the editor of National Review, famously quipped that he would rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT, most conservative intellectuals responded with a gleeful amen.

It was a clever quip with a populist twist, but even Podhoretz seems to doubt the authenticity of the sentiment.

Whether Buckley himself really meant it may be open to question, but it is certain that his son Christopher (who endorsed Mr. Obama) does not now and probably never did.

Of course, Christopher had the audacity to endorse Obama and sever his ties to the National Review because he felt that “Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that.” Left unsaid by Podhoretz is his clear implication that John McCain committed the equivalent of picking a random name out of a phone book when he selected Palin to be his running mate. For Podhoretz, liberals are forever looking down their noses at conservative politicians.

Unlike her enemies on the left, the conservative opponents of Mrs. Palin are a little puzzling. After all, except for its greater intensity, the response to her on the left is of a piece with the liberal hatred of Richard Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush. It was a hatred that had less to do with differences over policy than with the conviction that these men were usurpers who, by mobilizing all the most retrograde elements of American society, had stolen the country from its rightful (liberal) rulers. But to a much greater extent than Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush, Sarah Palin is in her very being the embodiment of those retrograde forces and therefore potentially even more dangerous.

Yes, it is true that Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush gained power by “mobilizing the most retrograde elements of American society.” Yet, with each succeeding generation, those retrograde elements have leeched more into the GOP gene pool and infected the leadership and even the policy shops. From down below, the footsoldiers of the Reagan Revolution see this as a good thing. No longer are a bunch of Connecticut Yankees paying lip service to their evangelicalism while they munch pork rinds and clear brush on their temporary ranch. But everyone else, on the right and the left, is appalled to see one of our two viable political parties reach the point where Dan Quayle looks absolutely statesmanlike.

Palin and the Tea Partiers are indeed retrograde. They are only coherent in their anger and white-hot resentment. They have no foreign policy beyond ‘kill-them-all-and-sort-them-out-later.’ Unless, of course, they subscribe to kind of ‘stopped-clock-paranoid-isolationism’ of Ron Paul. They rail against government run medical care while telling us to keep our hands off their government-run (Medicare) medical care. It’s an insult to Ronald Reagan to compare him to these people.

I haven’t heard a Republican make an honest and fair statement in a year now. And I mean that. I haven’t seen it in any forum. Privately, and quietly, Republican policy wonks are lamenting the complete lack of seriousness in anything that the party leadership has to say about anything.. They know that the Republicans are in no condition to govern.

And, honestly, that is the biggest threat facing this country. Bigger than the threat of terrorism or a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is the threat that the American people will tire of the Democrats and have no alternative but a bunch of Steve Kings and Michele Bachmanns with the temperament of John McCain and the foreign policy objectives of Bill Kristol. That’s a recipe for the end of the world as we know it. And you know it.