Michelle Malkin

A recent syndicated column by Michelle Malkin indicates what happens to interesting conservative commentators when they sign on as GOP flacks: They become predictable Republican mouthpieces and attack dogs against the Dems. For years I read Michelle with delight as she railed against weak-kneed politicians in both parties. She was murder on Republicans as well as Democrats—indeed, on anyone who truckled to the Hispanic immigration lobby. Even more refreshingly, she never indulged any politicians who caterwauled about victimized minorities. Michelle happily banged around the NAACP and other groups that played the victim card. The fact that she’s Filipino may have allowed her to get away with some of her rhetoric, but I doubt that particular ethnic background has provided her with much benefit. Being a devoutly Catholic Filipino doesn’t bring much in the way of liberal grace. That identity is far less useful than being an angry black woman like Michelle Obama screaming against American white racism.

Then I noticed Michelle editorializing against corruption in the Democratic Party. On December 10, 2008, she began her new career with a long screed for National Review Online on the “Democratic Culture of Corruption.” After a series of polemics against Reid, Pelosi, and Barney Frank on Fox and in the usual GOP venues, Michelle came out with a well-publicized book, The Culture of Corruption, thanks to the tiresomely Republican publishing house Regnery. Her book-length blast against the Other Party carried the not-very-subtle subtitle Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies. Yes, there is corruption in the Democratic Party, but this disease is hardly limited to those who bear the “D” label. Our gargantuan, tax-engorged “liberal democracy” inevitably provides opportunities for corruption no matter which institutionalized party occupies the seats of power. The only solution is the one proposed by Ron Paul, which is to break down an overbearing public administration. Replacing one patronage party with another will do nothing to lessen the problem.

By now Michelle has become a particularly loud voice in the GOP propaganda machine, which is clear from her recent column’s over-the-top praise of Palin and her denunciations of the “Palin-hating convoy” following Palin’s train. Apparently these “Palin-bashing journalists” are wrong to dwell on Palin’s “incompetence” and to describe her as “trivial.” Michelle’s heroine is truly a world-historical figure:

What makes Sarah stand out in the national GOP field is that she is beholden to no one and controls her own destiny. She doesn’t need media kingmakers to make her. They need her. She doesn’t need newspaper or TV producers to drive her story. She drives them. Crazy.

Doesn’t Michelle notice that what she’s saying is at most only partly true? The former Alaska governor is an intellectually lazy person who runs at the mouth. Her inability to cite any national newspaper she read during her embarrassing interview with Katie Couric suggests something depressing about her knowledge of the world. I’m still trying to extract from Palin’s run-on sentences what she would do with Social Security. I won’t even touch immigration, an issue on which she seems to depend on leftover sound bites from the McCain campaign.