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“UTTERLY UNQUALIFIED”….Fareed Zakaria on Sarah Palin:

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.

….In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

I don’t want to overstate the importance of this, but it’s definitely a sign that Palin’s jig may be up. Zakaria frequently writes astutely, but he’s something of an establishment weathervane, reluctant to state firm opinions unless he’s got plenty of company. So if he’s willing to say flatly that Palin is “utterly unqualified,” it suggests that the center-right establishment pretty unanimously agrees about this. I don’t know for sure that this will have a noticeable effect on the campaign, but when you add it to the growing list of conservatives who have taken similar stands (George Will, David Frum, Rod Dreher, Kathleen Parker, Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer), it suggests that dismay over Palin may be reaching critical mass.

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