Brown and Palin: Two may be a crowd

JUST WHEN I WAS beginning to resign myself to President Sarah Palin it now happens that I have to come to terms with President Scott Brown. As everyone knows - at least that half of America that pays a little attention to politics while the other half tweets and texts - Brown has become a cult sensation among Republicans since he dared to put an inept woman candidate in her place up in Massachusetts. His name has already been smartly encoded on Capitol Hill as "No. 41" by admiring senators on his side of the aisle because he is empirical evidence that the Democrats are no longer filibuster-proof. Some of us, however, have known that for some time with guys like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson always hanging around with a suspicious rash.

So No. 41 is the party's Wave of the Future, which will surely embolden some of his ossified colleagues to unapologetically meet with their constituents who might have preferred waves of health care or cleaner air. Americans have long enjoyed waves, particularly at athletic events where fans have leaped to their feet without really knowing why.

Some of No. 41's nitpickers have sneered that he posed as a nude model for a magazine, a blip of moral exposure that no one could find in the GOP's book of family values. But that should be on his plus side. Despite the headiness of the moment, no one can possibly imagine the likes of Chuck Grassley or Jim Inhofe duplicating No. 41's immodest behavior.

Speaking of posing, the question now is how President Palin, who had been No. 1, will respond to No. 41. Having two presidents would not be out of the question. There was a time when there were three popes. I doubt that she would thrust herself onto a magazine centerfold. But politicians do strange things when they are running scared. In pre-No. 41, President Palin was doing fabulously. The Harper's Index noted that 65 pct. of Republicans would support her candidacy although only 58 pct. thought she was qualified for the job. But it is only fair to report that no more than 27 pct of these Republicans believe Barack Obama was "legitimately" elected.

In any case, the GOP presidential wannabes have shrunk to two people who are already president, No. 41 and No. 1. Rudy Giuliani disqualified himself by forgetting things like 9/11 or whether the President mentioned terrorism in his speech. Mitt Romney lost much of his luster of being elected as a Republican governor in Democratic Massachusetts. Mike Huckaby would never pose nude. And a few others were sleeping around with girlfriends.

I imagine the alchemists at Fox News who have been spending so much time with Palin to turn base metal into gold will now have to take a second look at their investment, if not a centerfold.