Sarah Palin: Revisiting the concept of PROXY VOTERS in a post-Huckabee era

As many of you know Mike Huckabee,on May 14,announced on his Fox weekend TV show he would NOT be running for President in 2012.

That set off a chain of events in the past month culminating today with Chris Matthews, previously a foe of Michele Bachmann, who had previously ridiculed her personally and politically and dumped all over her, to now sing Bachmann's praises for her debate performance last night.

A key revelation over the course of the last month is that both Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin have surged ahead in 5-7 national polls of GOP contenders due primarily to Huckabee bowing out (previous polls pre-Huckabee asking for second choices if Huckabee did not run verify this)and also Donald Trump and Mitch Daniels deciding not to run and thereby producing now a clear separation of 7-10 points between Romney and Palin vs. the rest of the field.

Here are 5 events that have been brought about as a result of this information imho:

1)Mitt Romney has decided to lay low until Labor Day (Piers Morgan interview on CNN). This is called resting on your laurels or in football going into a defensive shell.

2)Mitt Romney has decided to skip the Ames Straw poll and not invest a lot of resources to win Iowa. At the same time recent polls have shown Sarah Palin surging in Iowa as well as the rest of the country. Iowa is a state where 45% of the caucus goers are projected to be VERY CONSERVATIVE and based on the 2008 exit polls of the caucuses 60% self-identified as evangelical Christians. These are the two groups that Romney had the least success with in 2008.

3)Via Rush Limbaugh last Friday: "The media now loves Romney; he's now their guy." Translation: The MSM will no longer be promoting the idea of someone coming out of the GOP establishment bullpen to replace Romney.

4)Sarah Palin has gone dark since her interview with Chris Wallace 9 days ago. Her surge in the polls does give her more latitude and flexibility to adjust her schedule without having to look over her shoulder and to plan the launch of her presidential campaign.

5)The MSM has not only embraced Mitt Romney but as of last night and today gone absolutely "nuts" in their praise of Michele Bachmann, including her arch-nemesis Chris Matthews. In addition Joan Walsh of Salon is now calling on Herman Cain to withdraw from the race. Recent polls show Cain ahead of Bachmann.

Now when you take these 5 events as a whole as a political observer you are left with one conclusion: People are beginning to choose sides. In other words the 2012 GOP presidential nominee will be either Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin with no one else having any chance whatsoever of claiming the brass ring; and thus the next President of the USA will either be the current one, President Obama, Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin. It is what it is.

Now you skeptics and doubting Thomases are sure to ask, "What if Sarah Palin does not run?" Answer: Get ready for the coronation of Mitt Romney.

Without Sarah Palin in the mix, the polls show Romney even creating further separation between himself and the field sometimes as much as 20 points.

If you are Mitt Romney only one person stands in your way to winning the GOP nomination.

If you are Sarah Palin, when you get in all you need to do is to focus on narrowing the gap with Romney in the polls and not have to worry about the rest of the field passing you, at least for the time being.

If you are the mainstream media, you go "all in" with Mitt Romney, lock, stock and barrel because if you don't Sarah Palin may win the nomination.

If you are moderates or centrists who despise Sarah Palin you might decide you no longer have the luxury of supporting other moderate-centrist candidates (eg. Pawlenty, Gingrich, Huntsman) and must throw your support to Romney because the thought of Palin winning the nomination is an abomination to you. And that is despite Romneycare and Mitt's reputation as a flip-flopper.

And if you are Mitt Romney and you realize that for every liberal/moderate GOP primary voter there are approximately 2 conservative voters and that Palin dominates among folks who self-identify as VERY CONSERVATIVE or social conservative, you see the need to sponsor a stalking-horse to bleed away conservative votes from Palin so you can come up the middle in close contests. It also helps that other conservatives are also part of the mix to bleed votes away from Palin.

It just so happens that there is a rumor that Michele Bachmann is a stalking-horse for Mitt Romney and since yesterday the MSM has embraced her as warmly as they now embrace Romney.

So bottom line folks here is how this dynamic will in all likelihood play out over the next 7-9 months:

If you vote for door #1 (Romney) or door #2 (any other conservative but Sarah Palin) Romney will be the GOP nominee. If you are happy or comfortable with that thought, you know who to vote for, but if you have an antipathy to Romney getting the nomination as many freepers I suspect have, you must choose door #3 and vote for Sarah Palin next year. You have no other option

And as for the scenarios that have yet to play out there is one major one not yet decided.

Will conservatives, evangelicals and Tea Party supporters who are opposed to Romney being the GOP nominee coalesce en masse around Sarah Palin or will they decide to become PROXY VOTERS in the end?

That is the $64,000 looming question over the next several months. Will pro-Palin types vote their conservative values and principles and vote for Sarah Palin or will they vote as PROXY VOTERS who have been advised, counseled, or strongly influenced by the GOP establishment, the media, interest groups, prominent RINO's to consider other factors like electability (Palin is damaged goods), appealing to minorities, not being out of step of the new world order and the need to please the media when casting their vote?

The decision made by conservative, evangelicals and Tea Party supporters whether to support Palin en masse or to divvy up their support among other conservatives or Mitt Romney will determine who will win the nomination.

Vote your values-Palin is your nominee; become a PROXY VOTER and vote against your values or against Palin who you like the best and best represents your values and you will assuredly get Romney.

The #1 goal of the MSM: to create a massive number of PROXY VOTERS by duping unsuspecting GOP primary voters thereby handing the nomination to Romney.

There is apparently a lot to like about Bachmann. But I never have actually heard her talk except for the barest snippet I caught on tag end of the CNN "debate." But the thing is, we generally elect governors to the presidency unless both candidates are senators/vice presidents. And in fact, no sitting president has ever been defeated by a senator or congressman. Or a non-pol like Cain, however attractive he might be.

My tagline advocates, and has since the start of last year, "Draft Palin." That is precisely because I projected the likelihood that you suggest - that "better" than Palin was probably going to end up being the enemy of "good enough." The upcoming movie, "The Undefeated," could very well transform the dynamic of the race very favorably.
Nominating Romney would eviscerate Republican appeal to the Tea Party and could therefore result (joy of joys for the journalists and other Democrats) in a significant second party movement.

Iowa is a state where 45% of the caucus goers are projected to be VERY CONSERVATIVE and based on the 2008 exit polls of the caucuses 60% self-identified as evangelical Christians. These are the two groups that Romney had the least success with in 2008 . . .

"What if Sarah Palin does not run?" Answer: Get ready for the coronation of Mitt Romney.

Alternate answer: Iowa adopts my slogan - Draft Palin.
The campaign finance laws, unconstitutional as they are, put a high premium on a draft movement. IMHO.

“”Despite my affiliation with the Republican Party, I don’t think of myself as highly partisan.” — Mitt Romney in his book No Apology”

This man is not to be trusted, and will just take over where Obama left off, just like Obama took over where Bush left off.

The only people I trust are Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin...or Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Sentorum or Ron Paul.

Fred Thompson did lack a certain energy, didn’t he.

I actually don’t think it’s much of an analogy. I was more pointing out how people are always attacking other candidates as stalking horses in order to build up their own candidates, and how it’s easy to draw analogies to suit your purpose, whether those analogies match up or not.

One thing I think we can learn from the Thompson affair (and I was a strong Thompson supporter, worked to get him on our ballot here in Virginia) — if you wait until September, you face a tough hill.

By that time, most everybody who is interested in political work has taken up shop with some candidate or another. Candidates need to have a 30+ state organization to get out their voters, and that requires thousands of volunteers who also will have joined up with other candidates by that time, endorsements will have gone out to other candidates as well.

I suppose it could be overcome — I was expecting Fred Thompson to do so in 2008 because the field was so split and conservatives were SO looking for a real candidate and Fred was supposedly that candidate. But then we just fractured between Thompson and Huckabee (and a few other candidates) and McCain was able to get back in the race, and since he wasn’t splitting the maverick vote, was able to grab the nomination process while capturing 30-40% of the vote.

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