[Churchill] wrote: “I can think of no one who better reflects the principles and integrity of Colorado Republicans than Tom Lucero,” adding, “Who knows? He might even have what it takes to be the next Dick Cheney.”

Well said. But I’m not even sure Lucero’s got what it takes to be the next Sarah Palin.

And so the prose goes to hell. One paragraph earlier, the train was the economy, and it was speeding toward a wreck. In this paragraph, the train is public service, and it has been derailed. In fact, the train is “increasingly derailed.” Never mind that, in English, a train cannot become “increasingly derailed,” any more than a fetus can be “increasingly aborted,” or than Christ Our Savior can be “increasingly born”—we already knew that no wreck and no derailment could stop this particular vice-presidential locomotive.

Enjoy.

It was generally agreed that because the statement was structurally chaotic, even formless, Palin had written it herself. No self-respecting political operative would have produced something so badly crafted. One would have thought that this would be seen as evidence of the absence of calculation, but instead it was received as evidence of her Alaska-limited understanding of politics. (Doesn’t she know, they asked, that resigning is no way to run for president?) Rather than reasoning from what they took to be the political ineptitude of her performance to the possibility that it wasn’t political, they just continued on their merry, muckraking way.