Posted on 05/26/2011 6:06:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Mama Grizzly is coming out of hibernation. This weekend, Sarah Palin is launching her "One Nation" bus tour, visiting historical sites across the country. Palin will start on Memorial Day at the Rolling Thunder weekend motorcycle rally that starts at the Pentagon. Where it will end has yet to be announced. But given Palin's other recent move—the announcement of a feature-length film on her tenure as governor—it looks as if her ultimate destination may be the White House.
Whatever Mitt Romney had on his plate for Memorial Day, he'd better make room. If we assume—for the purposes of page views—that Palin is getting into the race, the Republican contest immediately becomes one between Palin and Romney, with other candidates circling for a way to break into the conversation. A recent Gallup poll shows Romney (17 percent) and Palin (15 percent) essentially in a tie among Republican voters. The third-place candidate, Ron Paul, has only 10 percent support.
The polls are not terribly meaningful at this point, of course. Name recognition has a lot to do with these numbers, so it's not surprising Palin and Romney are at the top. What may be more meaningful in assessing the Romney vs. Palin matchup is the polling about the characteristics of the two candidates' supporters. Romney comes out ahead. Palin has more intense followers, but she also has more intense detractors, and for the last few months her momentum has been going in the wrong direction in her party....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Cheers!
Most people following the Romney campaign are hoping that she'll run in order to split votes from other candidates.
I think that I could beat Mr. Obama next year if I had the Republican nomination. Every gas station price sign and pump would be a free ad for me. Every time someone buys groceries, pays a utility bill, cashes their Social Security check, eats macaroni & cheese instead of meat and can’t buy their kids new clothes, they’d compare me to Mr. Obama. Every time they talk to their unemployed neighbor, brother, cousin, former co-worker, best friend and co-religionist, I win. That’s why Gov. Romney wants the nomination. He didn’t make hundreds of millions of dollars by being a dope.
I hope you’re right, but I know many people who have a great deal of their self-worth invested in thinking that Sarah Palin is stupid. As much as they may hate the hardships, many won’t break down and vote for her because doing so would require them to confront that mistake in their judgment of her. More importantly, they’ve persuaded themselves that she would only make things worse.
Remember: We vote in private in the United States. What you tell your spouse, co-workers, friends, etc and what lever you actually pull can easily be two different things. No one will ever know.
I understand that we vote in private, but the issue is self-delusion. While I’ve never been an ardent Sarah Palin supporter, I’ve tried to defend her against attacks that I thought were unfair. I’ve run into people who have incorporated that perception so far into their minds that they aren’t going to change in the voting booth or anywhere else. They have too big a personal stake in believing that she’s not smart enough to be president.
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