SARAH PALIN AND THE PROBABLY IRREVERSIBLE FASCISM OF THE GOP

If the Republican Party can rid itself of Donald Trump soon, the entire Beltway will declare that the GOP has solved its fascism problem, which, we'll be told, was exclusively a Donald Trump problem.

I don't think it's going to be quite so easy.

For a large number of regular Republican voters, Sarah Palin is still an inspiration and a guiding light -- and she's gone fascist as well:

Sarah Palin has confessed to having a “political crush” on far right French politician Marion Marechal-Le Pen, whom she likened to Joan of Arc.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate heaped praise on the young National Front deputy Sunday as her anti-immigrant party went down in defeat in the second round of regional elections in France, after dominating in the first round.

“I have a political crush, but one I couldn’t vote for today -- because she ran for office in France,” Palin wrote in the conservative Breitbart news website....

“As Marion faces the political battles ahead, I wouldn’t be surprised if she says a prayer to France’s Patron Saint, for Marion is a reminder of her -- Joan of Arc,” Palin wrote.

The Breitbart piece, if you really want to read it, is here.

Marion Marechal-Le Pen is the niece of Marine Le Pen, now the head of France's National Front party. Marine is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, cofounder of the party and its head from its inception in 1972 until 2011. Marine Le Pen has tried to moderate the views of the Front somewhat, but Marion is kicking it old school, the way her grandfather did:

Even more rightwing and socially conservative than her aunt, Marine Le Pen, who heads the party, she is closer in many of her beliefs to her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

... Maréchal-Le Pen has stood out for adopting socially conservative stances that are more extreme than her aunt, Marine. She was a key figure in France’s anti-gay marriage demonstrations of 2013, leading one Paris cortege at which the British National Party’s then leader, Nick Griffin, was also present, while her aunt deliberately stayed away. She later publicly opposed the arrival in Marine Le Pen’s entourage of a defector from the traditional right who had founded a centre-right gay thinktank and campaign group, GayLib. She has opposed the French state providing free abortions, saying some women should pay for them.

Earlier this year, she retweeted a controversial video by a Front National MEP warning of the dangers of different types of Islam, while Marine Le Pen, trying to “detoxify” the party’s image, had ordered the video not to be promoted. Economically, she adheres less to her aunt’s state interventionism, and more to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s brand of free-market, free-enterprise capitalism.

More:

The younger Le Pen appeals to both Catholic traditionalists and to the radical identity movement thriving in the south that is trying to keep France French. Dishing out that message, she has vowed that as head of her southern region, she would cut funds to planned parenthood groups and associations representing Muslims.

"We are not a land of Islam," she said at a rally in Toulon. Muslims can be French citizens "only on condition that they bend to the customs and the way of life that Greek, Roman and 16 centuries of Christianity fashioned."

She walked that stance back a bit this week on iTele TV, stressing that all immigrants are expected to exchange their customs for the French way of life.

The French model "has been abandoned in favor of the multicultural ideal, a kind of right to be different that I profoundly believe contributes to the French fracture," she said.

Marechal-Le Pen gets extra love from some National Front supporters because she quietly nurtures the themes of party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, her grandfather, who holds a seat in the southern regional council. He has been ostracized by daughter Marine in a family feud that at one point risked fracturing the party.

Marechal-Le Pen makes it clear she opposes her grandfather's anti-Semitic remarks, which triggered the feud, but embraces his overall message, including the fear that Islam will overtake French civilization.

A lot of this is precisely what appeals to Palin, as she notes:

... I’m especially impressed with the courage of her young niece who is a devout Catholic and unapologetically pro-life --not an easy thing for a politician to be in a country that’s aggressively secular.

... young Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is unashamed to champion France’s Judeo-Christian identity and heritage as something worth preserving and fighting for. She publicly proclaims it, setting an example for even American politicians to be so bold.

... Marion Maréchal-Le Pen declares that France is not an Islamic land, but Muslims are welcome to become French citizens “only on condition that they bend to the customs and the way of life that Greek, Roman and 16 centuries of Christianity fashioned.”

What she’s saying should not be controversial. It’s common sense....

The Left wraps itself in political correctness and multiculturalism like a suicide vest. They’d rather blow up the whole country than admit the stupidity of thinking a nation can remain the same after inviting in millions of people who despise its values.

Well, Palin had already endorsed Trump's Muslim ban, so I guess this was a logical next step.

It's now becoming the conventional wisdom, based on a couple of Iowa polls, that Ted Cruz is going to beat Trump for the GOP nomination -- this despite the fact that Trump still has an extraordinarily passionate following in the GOP. (In a new national Monmouth poll of Republicans, Trump is at 41%, with Cruz a distant second at 14%.) Talk of a possible Trump loss leads a lot of observers to speculate that he'll quit the GOP and run third party. New York magazine's Jonathan Chait thinks Republicans should let Trump go, one reason being that "A Trump defection would give Republicans an opportunity to escape the ideological and demographic tar pit into which they have sunk." (Chait also thinks the GOP has nothing to lose because Republicans are doomed to lose in 2016, an idea that isn't borne out by recent polls showing Hillary Clinton losing to Marco Rubio and Ben Carson, and barely beating other Republicans, including Cruz.)

But purging just Trump won't get that job done -- the tar is too deep and it's spreading too fast. Calls for fascism and white nationalism, stripped of all euphemism and dog whistles, are now what Republicans mean when they say they refuse to be "politically correct." This is what the GOP is rapidly becoming: a National Front.