WORST. ANSWERS. EVER…. As jaw-dropping as Sarah Palin’s interviews with Katie Couric have been, we’d heard rumors for days that there was more embarrassment yet to come. The rumors were, if anything, understating the case.
Last night, Couric and the “CBS Evening News” ran one more segment, posing the same questions to both Palin and Joe Biden. As you’ve no doubt heard, Palin talked about why she disapproves of Roe v. Wade, and why she also believes in a constitutional right to privacy. Asked to name other Supreme Court rulings she disagrees with, Palin offered humiliating gibberish. Her responses looked even worse, if that’s possible, when compared to Biden’s sound and sensible answers to the identical questions.
I expected this is to be cringe-worthy, but I didn’t expect the trainwreck to be this painful. Hilzoy explained in a terrific post last night why Palin doesn’t have the foggiest idea how our constitutional system works, and doesn’t even understand the intellectual basics of what ostensibly is one of her key issues.
I am, curious, though, how the right is going to respond to Palin’s nonsensical perspective on abortion rights. D-Day explained:
I don’t know if she believes in the right to privacy or if she believes in the words “right” and “privacy” and saw them together and took a stab at it. But this is a major, MAJOR no-no for the fundies and the wingnuts. She undermined the entire intellectual argument against Roe without even recognizing it. Taking her logic (if it can be called that), if there’s a Constitutional right to privacy then there’s a right to keep medical decisions confidential, not a state’s right but a fundamental Constitutional right.
This is about 35 years’ worth of arguments crashing down right now. If any backlash could cost her the nomination it would be over this.
My guess is, leading conservatives won’t care too much, because they’ll assume, probably correctly, that if Palin takes national office, and even becomes president, the party and its base will just explain to Palin what she has to do. Not being sophisticated enough to understand the issues with any depth, Palin will, they’ll assume, just follow the party line.
That said, I’d be surprised if Palin’s incoherent perspective didn’t give Republicans and conservative activists pause. She may not understand foreign or domestic policies, but they no doubt assumed she would at least understand Roe and the right to privacy. She doesn’t. Not even a little.
