Posted on 01/02/2011 6:17:07 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
We’re now less than two years away from the next presidential election, which means it’s time for 2012 presidential speculation to begin! The first This Week of the year kicked off the talk with some of the biggest names on the Republican side, and George Will seems to have found through the litany of names what he called “the President’s secret weapon”: Sarah Palin’s inability to be elected.
Asked by Jake Tapper (filling in for Christiane Amanpour) to evaluate the Republican landscape for November 2012, Will began by addressing the fact that Mike Huckabee had performed particularly well in the primaries in 2008– better than Mitt Romney– and then added this salacious tidbit of speculation:
“The President’s secret weapon may be the Republican nominating electorate… There is one person, high in the polls, Sarah Palin, who cannot be elected president because she cannot compete where elections are decided. In the collar counties outside Chicago, Montgomery County outside of Philadelphia– just can’t compete there.”
He went on give some predictions based on the fact that nominees, he explained, tend to win the majority of electoral votes in the Mississippi Valley– giving Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Sen. John Thune, and the suddenly-popular Gov. Mitch Daniels a leg up in that area.
It will be interesting to see if and when Palin confronts such derision, especially if this will set the tone for how pundits will discuss her chances for the rest of the year. While in 2010– two years removed– she could afford to be glib about it over Twitter, her chances as she races the clock will increasingly depend on how presidential she can come across, that trait one that, using her behavior last year alone, may be easy to “refudiate.”
The clip from today’s This Week on ABC below:
(VIDEO AT LINK)
Oh, and they don’t always say it directly.
More nonsense from George Will:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/02/george-will-debt-ceiling/
No one who writes for the Washington Post is a real conservative.
I like Palin as much as you. However, executive experience in a president is over rated, as is intelligence.
A 110 IQ, a well-thought and consistent philosophy built on reason and the knowledge of human nature AND a really good Chief of Staff is all that is required to be a good President.
That would increase her favorables by 15-20 points.
George and his Beltway punditry along with the GOP-E had better hope she runs, because without her, the Grand Old Party has a very weak field, with zero excitement and zero charisma and zero ability to raise the funds needed to defeat obama.
Thanks for the response and the candor. I haven’t given it much thought, either. Any conservative candidate worth his/her salt ought to be able to hang Obama on any attempt to claim fiscal conservatism or limited government as his mantle.
>> I seem to recall that Will was never much of a Reagan guy until Reagan was dead. <<
Well, then I’d say your recall is a bit rusty.
GOOD!!! We don't want "Ivy League!
and frankly MOST WOMEN "don't like her".
Correction. Most All LIBERAL women "don't like her."
Where did you buy your crystal ball?
Would it be fair to say that McCain threw the election?
I’ll cop to rusty... Will is an establishment kind of guy, and Palin is anything but - so I’m not at all surprised to see him not all that supportive of her potential candidacy.
Amen to that. I want to die knowing my country is safe and on the mend.
However, I will not vote for a RINO.
I'd say that a candidate with liberal positions should run in the liberal party; unfortunately, the GOP has become another liberal party.
We need to either get our party under control (no more RINOs!) or get a new one.
Yeah! America loves wishy-washy yes men who check the direction of the wind before changing their decisions.
That's exactly the lack of morals, standards and foundation that helped Kerry win the 2004 election! /SARC
I totally agree.
I will NEVER, EVER vote for a RINO again. If it helps the opposing candidate, so be it.
If more conservatives felt that way, we would never be stuck with a candidate like McCain.
Denial of electability is always a central part of the opponent’s strategy.
Until proven otherwise, George Will is saying this not because he thinks Palin is unelectable—he’s saying it because he doesn’t want her to be elected.
She is going to make the Country Club Repubs heads explode. The only question is whether they will support obozo or Palin?
Pray for the Tea Party Congress
I was referring to “With all due respect”.
The dread fear in the pit of our collective stomach is that the leadership of this country is so deeply entrenched in its elitist control of every aspect of our culture that nothing will change.
RINO, establishment Republicans are busy setting traps for Tea Party members. None have been appointed chairpersons of standing committees. Leftists, as always are better on defense than Conservatives. They will work tirelessly to smear and defeat every effort to dismantle their brave new world.
The people have spoken loud and clear these past 2 years in absolute oppposition to every mandate passed by the Pelosi/Reid/Obama conspiracy. The people have been ignored again and again.
We have elected many fine Americans with the promise that they will turn this train wreck around. Will we see these newly minted Congress people corrupted and marginalized? That is our greatest fear.
The bright light that shone in the Tea Party this past year will not be dimmed regardless of the likely failure of government to reign itself in. We will learn that elections are not enough. We will find the means to starve the beast, tame it and cage it with the iron bars of our Constitution.
We may not yet have developed the tactics to win this war but it will be won. Government will not rule this nation. The people will rule themselves with justice, decency, respect and a hard fisted commitment to the rule of moral law. Right now the only politician in view who can accomplish this is Sarah Palin. George Will be da**ed.
The last poll I saw...it's been some months...was that her favorables among women lagged her favorables by men by about 12 points.
An absurd spread, so I challenged a woman I know who's "moderately conservative" and hates Obama.
Her response was that she "didn't like her" and really could not come up with a substantive reason why. I've since asked the question many time of other people and my not-statistically-valid experience is that the men who don't like her usually state a reason...and the women can't come up with one. And, the younger the woman the more vehement the "feeling".
Of course there are millions of conservative women who like Palin. 30+% favorables among women makes that clear. But there is a big gap.
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