The XX Factor: What women really think.

We'll Miss George

Juliet,

I think this is going to turn out to be a real crisis moment for the conservative movement. The difference between Palin and Bush is: He was just pretending to be regular folk from the heartland, whereas she actually is. Bush was perfect for the conservative movement. (As was Reagan, in a different way.) Bush could masterfully pull off the act of being a struck-by-the-light evangelical from Texas. But the Buckleys and the Frums and the Brookses of the world all knew that actually, he was safe--an Ivy Leaguer from the landed gentry who was just playing a necessary role.

Palin, on the other hand, really tests this faux populism the party leaders have been peddling for so long. Now, the elder Buckley's test--faculty of Harvard or first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book--is real. Palin comes from the latter category, and it ain't looking pretty.  

Before his column today, Brooks told a luncheon crowd that Palin was a fatal cancer on the Republican Party. A week earlier, he'd praised her debate performance as fluid, confident, energetic--piled on the compliments. Either he is just hoping for the best and can't make up his mind. Or he said at a private luncheon what he really believes. Either way it seems the movement is headed for a brain freeze, as all its best thinkers desert.