Long term consequences of the Palin pick

What the GOP never seems to grasp is that by appealing to their base, they generally tend to alienate everyone who isn't in their base. Appealing to racist southerners ended up alienating blacks, latinos and new englanders. Appealing to gay bashers alienated GLBT voters and their allies. Appealing to hard right christians alienated atheists, agnostics and essentially all non-christian faiths.

I was fairly apolitical until last year, voted the first time in 2004 for Kerry. I would say alot of what drove me to pay attention to politics is becoming aware of what a terrible job the GOP is doing and has done with the country to the point where I was shaken out of my apathy. The endless screwups, Katrina, appointing incompetent people to run agencies, vote fraud, problems with 9/11, lying about Iraq, economic collapse, etc.

To me, Palin was the final straw that I needed to know the GOP was totally bankrupt intellectually, divorced from reality, indifferent to the serious problems facing the country and totally unprincipled. I am not saying the dems are perfect by any means because they aren't (ask congressman Waxman about Sibel Edmonds for example, or ask why the congress isn't taking vote fraud, a new 9/11 investigation or enforcing subpoenas seriously), but the GOP has really bottomed out. To hear all the GOP talking heads brag about what a great job Palin did when anyone with half a brain knows she is dangerously incompetent just cements the fact that the GOP has completely lost touch with reality and are so power hungry that they could care less. Any party that is deluded enough to think Palin should be a 72 year old cancer survivor's heartbeat away from leadership can't be allowed near the levers of power.

Personally, I see a massive grassroots loss of confidence in the GOP with the Palin pick almost being the cherry on top. To think that after the last 8 years of incompetence, to pick her as the VP to help solve these problems is really infuriating.

On some grassroots level there has to be a huge pushback against the GOP. It almost seems like the only Republicans left soon are the hardcore diehards and the ones who aren't really paying attention.

Does anyone get what I'm getting at? Does anyone else think that the Palin pick could haunt the GOP for 10-20 years by just proving how little regard they have for their leader's capacity to govern well or in the intellect of the public?

in your last sentence: the only Republicans to be left are the hard core diehards or those not paying attention...there's the problem: 40% of this fucking country isn't paying attention. That combined with a lapdog corporate media and a lazy intellectual attitude...if we don't elect Obama this time around, I think we've fucked ourselves!!!!!