RSS Feed MenuIt’s a funny moment in Sarah Palin’s career. David Broder is saying we should take her more seriously. Nate Silver is saying she could win the primary in 2012 in a variety of scenarios, and Ace of Spades is talking her down.
What does it mean? Basically, it feels a bit too early in the cycle to actually talk about 2012, but not too late to start playing the perception game. Except, it’s all so obvious. The Left wants to talk her up because they perceive her as the least threatening contender, and the Right wants to talk her down because, well, they don’t know if the Left is right about this one or not.
What the Democrats know for sure is that their own natural coalition really doesn’t like Sarah Palin. Using her name and the threat of her style of politics, brings in the cash and keeps everyone in line on tough votes. In that way, she functions very similarly to the way Hillary Clinton did to the Right in the ’90s and the ’00s. That’s all.
So, my warning is this: the anti-Hillary thing really didn’t do much to help the Republicans. I’m not sure that the anti-Palin thing will work to the Democrats’ advantage, beyond the money game. It certainly won’t make her the nominee; that will be a matter of the state of reality, not Obama’s framing.
Demosthenes // Feb 12, 2010 at 3:56 pm
There are three categoryiesof political observors that focus on Palin. The first group are the thinkers (many of them conservatives like David Frum and Andrew Sullivan, but some of whom are thoughtful Democrats) who are appalled by Palin’s ignorance, serial lies, and general stupidity. These people want to expose Palin so she never gets even close to the White House. The second group are her supporters amongst the public, who are ill-educated religious fanatics who really don’t care what she says and are indifferent to her lack of qualifications, so long as her Christianist views make it to the White House. The third group are pundits, such as the Fox News bloviators (Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc.), talk radio blowhards (Limbaugh et al.) , and senile fools (Broder, Klein, et al.) who like her for all the wrong reasons.
In any event, like David, I hope for the day we can all ignore this foolish nonentity. That day will come when the Republican Party has its own Barack Obama — a combination of charisma and intelligence. (Yes, I committed heresy by saying something nice about the president, but let’s be honest — Republicans would die for a candidate like him).
LFC // Feb 12, 2010 at 5:59 pm
So, my warning is this: the anti-Hillary thing really didn’t do much to help the Republicans.
Well that was for several reasons. First, it was obvious that the rancor between Obama and Hillary was pretty hot. And when Obama won the nomination, he felt no need to kow-tow to her and the laughable PUMA group that had zero impact on the election. So they couldn’t really tie Obama to Hillary, and her frothing minions were a small group.
Palin is another story. She supports nearly every crazy right wingnut idea, and she has lots of frothing minions. They aren’t nearly enough to take an election on their own, but by staying home they could kill a GOP candidate. The GOP nominee will most likely have to kiss her a**.
Although think about Palin. She’s all about personal gain. Just like it was for Limbaugh and Beck, her earning potential goes up while Obama is in office. If she can’t be POTUS in 2012, do you really think she’d spend all her political capital to get a Republican elected, or do you think she’d take the path most profitable?