Taking Palin's Chances Seriously (Mild Barf Alert)

The American Scene ^ | July 22, 2010 | Noah Millman

[2ndDivisionVet]

I guess it’s time we did. Palin is one of the top two contenders for the nomination right now. She is the only candidate with an actual and substantial popular base of support, the only one who can generate real popular enthusiasm. She has little in the way of an organization of her own, but she’s the candidate in the best position to coopt the organization that the Tea Party Movement is building. And to the extent that her endorsements are perceived to have made a real difference in the primaries (as, after Georgia, they are beginning to be), that will speak loudly to local GOP bigwigs.

Her strongest competition is Mitt Romney, who is strong where Palin is weak – obvious intelligence, establishment backing, proven ability to run an actual campaign for President, strong organizational skills and a deep political organization – but who is strikingly weak where Palin is strong. In fact, Romney is pretty much exactly the candidate Palin wants to run against: someone who generates little popular enthusiasm, comes off as phony, is a member of the elite and the establishment, is easy to tar as a fence-sitter and position-changer – and a man with surprisingly little sex appeal for somebody so objectively good-looking. And he got beat last time by a guy with no organization, no money, and who nobody in the GOP establishment really wanted to see win. And he’s a Mormon. Whose first career was as a Wall Street banker. Who signed a health care plan as governor of Massachusetts that looks a lot like the one President Obama signed for the whole country. Don’t get me wrong – Romney has a very real shot at the nomination. But he’s not the strongest horse I’ve ever seen.

Who else is in the race? Huckabee is weaker than Palin where she is strong and not notably strong where she is weak – and he’s at least as unacceptable to the powers that be in the GOP. And then there’s the parade of governors – Jindal, Pawlenty, Barbour, Daniels, Perry, possibly Christie or somebody else I’ve forgotten. Once upon a time Mark Sanford was on that list. And then there’s Newt Gingrich, a man who may actually have more Republican enemies than Democratic ones. I really do feel like if any of these guys was going to be a serious contender, we’d have heard about it by now. Pawlenty’s the only one who’s definitely running, and Perry is the only one who could consolidate a lot of support quickly if the opportunity arose.

That makes it sound like we’ve basically got a two-person race and we’ll see who wins. But the GOP establishment, such as it is, must be terrified of a Palin campaign, and will want to quash her candidacy somehow. After all, if she runs against them, and wins, then they’ve been defeated. That’s bad enough. If she then runs disastrously in the general election – and all indications are that she would – the party suffers a massive defeat. That’s worse. And if she wins the general election? Well, let’s leave aside what that means for the country and assume we’re just dealing with self-interested individuals worried about their own political futures. If Sarah Palin wins the Presidency, then she reshapes her party to suit her preferences. And anybody who came out strongly against her will be in the doghouse for years. She is not a “with malice toward none, with charity for all” type of Republican.

Moreover, even if they get on-board with her, I have a hard time picturing them being comfortable trusting her. Again, assume they don’t care whether she has any idea what she’s doing and assume they don’t care what happens to the country. Just in terms of political trust – will this person return my favors; will this person play the game – Palin’s got to have a really high wall to climb. Really high.

So no doubt they want to stop her before it gets to that point. How can they do it?

They can’t expect the gasbags to do it for them, because it’s not in their interest. Attacking Palin would be bad business for Limbaugh or Beck or whoever – if only because it would divide their audience. They can’t expect the mainstream media to do it for them because of the limited influence the regular media has in Republican circles. And they can’t do it themselves directly because they don’t act in concert, and anybody who sticks his neck out first is liable to get it chopped off.

Their first, entirely reasonable hope is going to be that she does it to herself. That she fails to build an effective network of support. That she has a massive falling out with leaders of the Tea Party over some esoteric point or other. That she gets blamed for some high-profile midterm losses and responds by lashing out at her critics, making her seem like even more of a loser. That she just gets old, and people move on to something new. If any of that happens, the race opens up. And all of that is very possible. I’m skeptical that Palin can easily be stopped by anybody outside pointing out her deficiencies. But one debate where she looks scared of the competition, or where she comes off as whiny and defensive, and should could drop like a rock, because she’s a celebrity candidate; if her persona cracks she has nothing to fall back on.

But if her strategy works on her terms, then the GOP has a problem.

If that happens, the GOP will need to convince Romney to go kamikaze. Which may not be that hard. Romney has absolutely got to win this time. Palin could put together a career as a media superstar or political kingmaker even if she loses, provided she goes out the right way. Huckabee certainly seems to be enjoying his show. The various worthy governors probably have as good a shot in 2016 as they do now, assuming the GOP loses in 2012. Heck, they all probably would settle for Vice President anyway, and it’s pretty easy to see Jindal or Daniels taking the job of being “President Palin’s brain”. But Romney’s already been running for President for four years. He’s got nowhere else to go. And he has no hope of having a role in a Palin Administration. While others might have reason to appease Palin, Romney has none. The only reason for him not to try to destroy her is if he thinks he’s more likely to win without doing that, and in the scenario we’re worrying about that’s not the case. Of course, throwing everything at her probably damages Romney more than it does her – but he may have no choice at some point but to try it. And if he can damage her enough that both of them have very high negatives among Republicans, then someone like Rick Perry could enter relatively late, swoop in and snatch the nomination. And Romney can console himself with being Treasury Secretary or something.

So that’s the way I expect things to play out. One or two very plausible candidates who may not be sure about running will wait in the wings for a bit. If Palin flames out and Romney doesn’t connect, then we have an open race. If it looks like Romney is running away with it, they stay out. If it looks like a Palin insurgency could actually win, pressure comes down on Romney to put her away, and the new establishment favorite becomes the candidate that the Palinites can reconcile themselves to.

I should say, as an aside, that we should all really hope that Palin does not get the nomination, whether we’re Republicans or Democrats. I admit, I liked her for about five minutes, before she opened her mouth. But, as I later concluded, she’s a shallow and demagogic politician, someone who would be an absolute disaster for the country. I know there are some Democrats who think it’d be a good thing if she were nominated because she’d be easier to beat, but the big drivers of the election are going to be the unemployment rate and events on the war front, and if both go badly the Republicans could probably nominate a ham sandwich and get some traction. They’d certainly be able to get some traction with a nominee who has the keen gut instincts that a successful demagogue like Sarah Palin has to have.

[2ndDivisionVet]

If Governor Romney couldn't beat Gov. Huckabee or Senator McCain, how in the world would he overcome a phenomenon like Governor Sarah Palin? Of course, the Left would love two socialized medicine authors running against each other in 2012.

[skr]

Obvious intelligence? Wow, what a dig. I’ll take natural intelligence, thank you very much. It’s a mighty big assumption that Palin isn’t setting up a network as she meets people from all over the U.S.

[pepsionice]

The problem is that if you sit down with 100 Republican-leaning individuals in the heartland...and put out the group of Romney, Palin, and Huckabee....there’s not a majority for any of the three. Each has a branch of the public who supports them for special reasons...but beyond that...not much else.

Romney can’t win in the south because folks want to bring up religion. Huckabee doesn’t exactly have the best debate skills in the world and it’s obvious. Palin is this wildcard that a fair number of folks can’t vision as President (at least not yet).

Then somewhere in the shadows...you’ve got Jeb Bush and Chris Christie of New Jersey. Either could probably pick up a quick twenty percent of the polls if they indicated an interest in running.

[2ndDivisionVet]

NO MORE BUSHES!!! This isn’t a banana republic, we shouldn’t have dynasties.

[Diogenesis]

Mitt Romney is ineligible LIKE OBAMA.

Mitt Romney is a failure, unqualified, who blames others LIKE OBAMA

Worse, Mitt Romney is mentally ill and hallucinates.

"Mitt Romney Lies About Father ‘Marching With Martin Luther King, Jr.’"
"Mitt Romney has been caught in yet another lie.
Only yesterday Romney’s claim of not supporting Planned Parenthood abortion mills was abruptly smashed by a photograph surfacing of him at one of their fundraisers in 1994.
Today, it’s Romney’s claim that his father “marched with” famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
During his “I’m a Mormon but it doesn’t matter” speech, Mitt Romney claimed he saw his father,
George Romney, marching with MLK during a 1968 civil rights march through Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
It was a stirring account of the efforts of his father to show that the Romney family have always reached across ecumenical lines.
Only one little problem… it never happened."

---

"Mitt Romney went a step further in a 1978 interview with the Boston Herald.
Talking about the Mormon Church and racial discrimination, he said:
"My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."
"Yesterday (12/20/07), Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom acknowledged that was not true.
"Mitt Romney did not march with Martin Luther King,"
he said in an e-mail statement to the Globe.

---

Against Myth Romney is 1:

"On Sunday, June 23, 1963, 125,000 people marched down Detroit's Woodward Avenue
to the Civic Center, in what was described at the time as the largest civil-rights demonstration in the nation's history.
According to the next day's account in the Holland Evening Sentinel,
the crowd at the Center "lustily booed," when representatives of Governor George W. Romney
read a proclamation declaring "Freedom March Day in Michigan." But Martin Luther King Jr. didn't fault Romney for his absence,
which the governor ascribed to his policy against public appearances on the Sabbath.
"At a news conference following the march . .
[King] refused to criticize Romney for not attending the demonstration," the Sentinel reported."

Against Myth Romney is 2:

Susan Englander, assistant editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, who is editing the King papers from that era,
says Myth Romney was untruthful, when she told the Globe yesterday:
"I researched this question, and indeed it is untrue that George Romney marched with [Dr.] King."

Against Myth Romney is 3:

"King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society,
and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published.
“I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society"

[Diogenesis]

Unlike Gov. Palin, the carpetbagger Willared Mitt Romney IS A PROVEN LOSER.

While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

The various worthy governors probably have as good a shot in 2016 as they do now, assuming the GOP loses in 2012.

I don't think we will see these type of calculated machinations, such as a Republican contender preferring to see the Democrat win in order to be well-positioned in 2016.

I think the right side of the country will coalesce around whoever emerges as the leading challenger to Obama.

I think it will dawn on people that if Obama manages to get a second term and another congressional majority, that he will move into a highly-radicalized mode in which the basic historic rights of Americans, such as free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom to bear arms, will be eliminated. This will lead into a civil war such as Russia, Germany, Spain and other countries went through in the 20th century but America was spared, and can be avoided by defeating Obama and restoring the constitutional system.

In other words, the seriousness of what is at stake will be apparent, and the two sides will harden and consolidate. From the progressive point of view, if they win all the marbles then that will be the last time they will have to endure such a thing as a pesky election, at least in the real sense as opposed to the soviet variety.

[hosepipe]

Palin / Gingrich the only winnable team..
Newt as VeeP would be accepted by most anti-newt people..
Palin with Newt backup would be accepted by anti-Palin people..

[Hugin]

In fact, Romney is pretty much exactly the candidate Palin wants to run against: someone who generates little popular enthusiasm, comes off as phony, is a member of the elite and the establishment, is easy to tar as a fence-sitter and position-changer – and a man with surprisingly little sex appeal for somebody so objectively good-looking. And he got beat last time by a guy with no organization, no money, and who nobody in the GOP establishment really wanted to see win.

In other words, just the kind of candidate the Pubbie establishment types love.

[2ndDivisionVet]

What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts

[piytar]

“in the best position to coopt the organization that the Tea Party Movement is building”

These presstitutes still don’t get it. We cannot be coopted. We’re doing the coopting. Get on board, GOP wannabes, or lose. RINOs (Mitt and you Mittbots, this means you) need not apply...

[Hugin]

Newt would in now way help Sarah, and his high negatives would hurt her. She would be much better off, if nominated, selecting a competent, conservative governor like Jindal or Christie.

[piytar]

Sorry, this is a bannana republic. That’s what we’re fighting to change...

[2ndDivisionVet]

The comment written by “section9” at the link is interesting.

[Darkwolf377]

It’s interesting how liberal journalists (I’m thinking this guy is one, based on tone and content) are undone by their prejudices—they think that since the average Republican is just plain stooopid, so much less intelligent than a lib, then of course a lib can figure out the Republican PARTY in seconds.

Liberals have so many blind spots when it comes to the right, and one they are always blinded by is that when conservatives are unabashedly conservative, they can win where it previously seemed they didn’t have a chance.

Huckabee, Gingrich and Romney are so incredibly unattractive in different ways to large enough groups of people that while I can see them getting the nomination, I think all three are losers against Obama. Palin is our best choice of the group running, but I don’t know if she can beat Obama (spare me the polls, which mean nothing at this point, including those showing Palin being unpopular).

I don’t think she can pull it off, but we gain nothing by putting up these weak, tired Country Club types like Romney, or these unattractive and flawed Huckabee types, and we at least have a shot with her.

[wiggen]

Newt? Who would be scheming every second? No way,no how.

[wiggen]

I don’t know the age of the writer,his past affiliations but if i was to ever be handed an article and asked,”journo list,yes or no?”,then i would have to say this opinion piece encompasses all the trite,venom and trash that i have read about from those people.
I lost count of the number of backhanded slaps he threw at Palin and i have no intention of going through it again to count but that was no intellectual exercise meant to see who the nominee might be but rather a vicious attack on the one candidate that he fears will change the countries direction.

[onyx]

And if she wins the general election? Well, let’s leave aside what that means for the country and assume we’re just dealing with self-interested individuals worried about their own political futures.

If Sarah Palin wins the Presidency, then she reshapes her party to suit her preferences. And anybody who came out strongly against her will be in the doghouse for years. She is not a “with malice toward none, with charity for all” type of Republican.

Bwaahahahaha! Now who could be worried about that?

[4rcane]

the left tells us which candidate they prefer. Romney!
the left tells us which candidate they fear the most. Palin!

[4rcane]

... what happened to their hope that Palin win the nomination so that she could lose against Obama. Easy victory for Obama right?