To the Orion Belt and beyond!

David Frum is both mad and flummoxed. He wants an accounting from Republicans for what he dubs The Palin Debacle. "Had John McCain won in 2008, we would have put an incompetent, deceitful, and vengeful person second in line to the presidency," he writes.

As for Lessons Learned, Frum says there are many. I'll cite just one: More respect for brains as a qualification for the presidency. Frum unloads with both barrels:

Within days of the announcement of Palin as GOP running mate, it became obvious to everybody that she could not pronounce two coherent consecutive sentences on any aspect of national policy, foreign or domestic. A lot of effort went into arguing that this ignorance did not matter, or even that it represented a weird kind of plus factor.

Three years later, we no longer hear such excuses for Palin. But it remains true even now that Republicans do not take intelligence or expertise very seriously as qualifications for the presidency. Mitt Romney's smarts do him surprisingly little good; Rick Perry's non-smarts do him disturbingly little harm; and Michele Bachmann's out-beyond-the-Orion-belt substitutions for familiarity with life here on Earth only intensify the admiration of her fan base.

Ha! And amen. Read the rest of Frum terrific piece here.