Really? Well if you want to get into speculation and disregard facts, can you show me were rank and file GOP voters ever jumped out on a limb to nominate someone like Palin? Goldwater might be the closest and that didn't turn out too well. GOP voters always choose the safe, easy choice every time. Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Dole, Bush, McLame. That is why Mittens and Perry are out front. They don't scare anyone.
Every once in awhile you get a JFK or Reagan type candidate who provides high risk..but also high reward because they connect with the folks.
“can you show me were rank and file GOP voters ever jumped out on a limb to nominate someone like Palin?”
Reagan was that type of candidate. He was viewed as the weakest opponent by the Carter administration. The press tried to paint a picture of him that ranged from a tottering old fool to the inept Bedtime for Bonzo guy. Every time a conservative runs they will be attacked and a bunch of nervous Republicans will end up nominating a Democrat-light candidate in their place; Dole, Bush Sr, Dole, and McCain. These candidates end up losing because the base sits home and the Democrats paint them as having the same policies. Republicans need conservative Democrats to believe there is a true difference between the candidates before they will support a Republican. Nominating a RINO never ends up working out the way Rove and company tell us it will....
Reagan was hardly the safe choice for the GOP nomination in 1980.
George H.W. Bush and John Connolly were the establishment candidates that year.
GHWB won Iowa, and that left Reagan’s candidacy hanging by a thread.
Reagan won Iowa. Trounced Connolly in South Carolina. The rest was history for a great man, Reagan, one of our 5 greatest presidents ever
The establishment did all it could to dump Reagan. He was NOT viewed as the safe choice.
So your theory is marred by the most striking of victories, Reagan’s.
Reagan was variously viewed as too old, too conservative, too much of a cowboy, too volatile, too dumb, too senile, too radical, too dangerous. Reagan was too polarizing. He was hardly the safe choice, as you claim.
So the GOP did pick someone like Sarah Palin — and like Rick Perry — previously. That candidate was Ronald Reagan.
-George