Palin inspires heavy breathing on the right

Kathryn Jean Lopez, the National Review Online's most single-minded proponent of pro-life positions of every stripe, outspoken defender of the Catholic Church's orthodoxies, approvingly passes along this endorsement of Sarah Palin, gleaned from her mailbox.

A gentleman on Palin:

She's smashing: highly intelligent, brave, unfazeable (I should guess), likeable, and a total knockout sexually.

Hubba hubba. And this wasn't a one-off thing: Earlier today, Lopez enthusiastically passed along the following comment from a culturally conservative female blogger at Culture11, a new online magazine:

If she were a president, she'd be Baberaham Lincoln.

That line was borrowed -- with credit -- from "Wayne's World 2" (in which the object of admiration was Tia Carrere, whose position on drilling in the Arctic Reserve could not be immediately determined.) Whence the interest on the part of cultural conservatives, of all people, in playing up Palin as an an object of sexual desire?

I assume it has something to do with the the meme that liberal feminists have abandoned their sexuality -- that Democrats think men and women are almost literally interchangeable, so left-leaning women let their looks go to pot. I didn't think that stereotype had much force anymore -- it's got sort of an early-'60s cast to it -- but Lopez must think it does.

In other contexts, of course, Lopez laments the oversexualization of our culture.

Culture11's Jordan G. explicitly expresses relief that we won't be forced to look at Hillary Clinton for the next four years, linking to an unflattering photo. The title of her post is, "If Having A Gorgeous VP Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right."