Sarah Palin and the RWIC revisited

Bob Schieffer’s review of Sarah Palin’s new book is perhaps the most damning yet: It is, he’s convinced, just not serious:

“I think she’s going to sell a lot of books,” the ABC news icon said. “I think she’ll be a great attraction as an amusement…but I can’t imagine she has much future in politics.”

Palin’s peculiar odyssey is a good reason to drag out my conviction that the RWIC — the Right-Wing Industrial Complex — is helping to destroy the Republican Party.

Put simply, it’s far more lucrative and rewarding to be an ideologue or a pundit than a public servant.

Toe the line and there are book deals, TV appearances, lecture circuits, think-tank gigs and consulting jobs.

But conservatives who stray from orthodoxy are essentially banished from the RWIC. In an era when government jobs for Republicans are scarce, that can be a fate worse than death.

So rather than make the kind of messy, complex decisions required by government service, Palin quit her day job as government of Alaska.

She chose purity over pragmatism. She chose the ka-ching of the book deal over the drudgery of helping a state navigate a devastating recession.

And for Palin it’s paying off big-time.

Unfortunately, many of the conservatives with the highest name recognition have made similar choices.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, is so happy as a talk-show host that he’s ambivalent about running for president.

(Huckabee is also out on the road currently hawking a new Christmas book…)

The other dominant conservative voices — Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh — began their careers as entertainers and radio jocks, not politicians.

They have no interest in dirtying their hands with the actual business of running a democracy.

And the Republicans who actually get down in the trenches and try to make the government better?

You know, people like Charlie Crist, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dede Scozzafava, Lindsey Graham, John McCain…

They’re vilified. Banished from the RWIC. Fundraising dries up. The doors to the lecture circuit close.

Even poor Newt Gingrich — an architect of the RWIC — was forced to apologize and humble himself after sticking to his endorsement of Scozzafava in NY-23.

After all, you can’t anger your customers. There are books and newsletters and DVDs to be sold. (Go here for Newt’s “Civil War bundle”.)