It never fails: Every time Sarah Palin makes the news--for being indignant or delusional, for or saying something stupid or, most recently, for her Friday-before-a-holiday-weekend surprise resignation--the Republicans use it as an opportunity to get all drooly over how "hot" she is.

The elephant in the room--at least in a roomful of elephants--is that she's really not that hot. She's OK. Kinda nerdy, but appealingly fresh-scrubbed. But as a sex symbol? Something gets lost in the translation. Same goes for the GOP's other "sex goddess," the knobby-kneed Ann Coulter. Republicans go on as though she's Aphrodite incarnate instead of the shrill, brittle fishwife she actually is.

I think the GOP wants to position itself as the party of hot women, because, you know, it's sexy. They've spent a lot of time deluding themselves that Democrats are "elitist" liberals--geeks, faggots and hippies all--that, in Republicans' mind, they must, by default, be the cool ones. It's like the entire party's political