A shout-out for "Sarah's Base Hardener"

William F. Buckley is smiling down from heaven at John McCain, who has found a new, improved, way to continue work that Buckley started.

Buckley's work: "I've spent my entire lifetime separating the right from the kooks."

Buckley has had another recent ally in George W. Bush, who by the sixth year of his administration had liberated so many conservatives from the base that Democrats carried the mid-term elections and gained control of the House. I recall thinking at the time that these liberated conservatives would become the founding members of a new movement called "Conscious Conservatism."

But the movement lagged, never gaining traction. In his general ineptitude, or indifference, it was another mission that Bush couldn't complete.

Enter Billy Pitchman. I can't remember his full name, but he is the guy who sells things on television: stain removers, carpet cleaners, scratch removers, tomato knives that also saw through nails. He has a full beard, wears a blue shirt, and has a voice like he was yelling at you through a hurricane. You've seen him?

Sarah Palin is Billy Pitchman in lipstick. John McCain put her to work hardening the base, and she is living up to the expectations of William F. Buckley. "Sarah's Base Hardener" is separating the right from the kooks in what the polls and the headlines indicate to be boatload numbers. Making the headlines are separating stalwart rightists like David Brooks, Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley, William Buckley's son, all of whom have floated to the top. But the real work takes place below the water line.

New, improved Sarah's Base Hardener features a secret ingredient that, when dumped into a tubful of conservatives, acts to eliminate choice. At the molecular level, it removes any molecule that doesn't look like and act like the molecule next to it. These molecules rise to the top, in a confused, multi-colored froth, while the base molecules, all exactly identical, sink to the bottom, so enraptured by their liberation from choice that they cry out against any agent of choice, including but not limited to Barack Obama, intoning, "Treason!" "Terrorist!" "Liar!" "Kill him!"

Sarah's Base Hardener has achieved such astonishing results in a few short weeks that accomplished base hardener sales hands like Rush Limbaugh are limp with envy. Looking at his own product, Limbaugh must wonder helplessly what Sarah's Base Hardener has, that his doesn't. She was on his radio show this week, and he said: "I'll tell you, I'm in a quandary here this morning. I admire you so much. I really don't even know what to ask."

But then he started to put two thoughts together, a very un-base-like thing to do (he might have wanted to rub his forehead with a little Sarah's Base Hardener, which can be applied topically), when he spoke of Sarah's "electrifying" speechmaking, and "partisan zeal." He could have been talking about Billy Pitchman and his hurricane-piercing voice. Could Sarah's Base Hardener's secret be as much about the delivery, as the product? Could be, said David Brooks, who said Sarah's "delivery skills are incredible." William Kristol, the kind of conservative for whom the choice between choice and base would have been particularly hard, but yielded quickly to Sarah's Base Hardener, said from the confused froth at the top of the tub that Sarah had "star quality. It matters a lot."

John McCain, meanwhile appears not to know what to do, with either the wonderfully hardened base or the froth at the top. His recent behavior indicates that a little Sarah's Base Hardener may have splashed on him, and he doesn't know which way to go. Rise or fall, at least he knows he has the gratitude of William F. Buckley.