Talking of horrible things going mainstream...

I meant to post this yesterday, but didn't for some reason. In any case, here is yesterday's bile:
In the WSJ today, another conservative seemingly comes out in favour of Sarah Palin as a valid candidate. I fear this may be some kind of trend, as a party devoid of any sensible leadership begins to grasp at straws.  What seriously annoys me, however, is that Republicans still have interesting candidates and a compelling ideology, but they are destroying it by listening to their increasingly socialist-resembling rabble. Urgh. It makes my blood boil that people are so inept at seeing the complexity of governing that they would prefer waste over some kind of attempt at streamlining as Obama has tried to do with healthcare. The US has one of the most inefficient markets for healthcare, it's deeply troubling and needs sorting out, and people are calling some kind of attempt at removing market inefficiencies socialism?
I have serious issues with the healthcare bill that has been passed (namely the cynical pandering to the left by Obama on some issues), but my main issue has been with the nature of opposition which was and is completely undignified. The counter-arguments that I've heard by the Republican party have been some of the most shocking examples of a party which is so mixed up between what is a truly socialist and what is a populist agenda that the sum of all its parts does not constitute any kind of reply. The continuation of that fact is the seeming embrace of people like Sarah Palin, who have no coherent world-view either and it all makes for a scathing slap in the face to serious conservatism, which should be about tempering society to responsibly embrace new realities and not a soulless opposition to debate. They both go against what Protestantism was all about in the first place, and their opposition to the idea of a more streamlined government, flies in the face of supposed support for capitalism.