Palin's Emergence (she may not get much competition for 2012 nom)

A strategist for a rival potential presidential rival e-mails to express amusement with Gov. Sarah Palin's come one, come all PR strategy:

Which means: a lot of the folks who you'd think are angling to run in 2012 are certainly preparing to do so, but they're looking to and thinking about 2016....

***If we’re on the up turn and Obama is popular, it’ll probably be Palin’s if she wants it.***

If we are in that situation, I don’t want Palin to run. I don’t want the media to have another excuse to bash her yet again. In such a situation, I would support Romney. Let him spend his fortunate and lose to the Communist Organizer.

For someone so lightly regarded by the Dems as out of her league, they sure seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to tear her down.

This can only mean one thing. They are scared of their wits they will have to run against her in 2012. They used to use the same argument about Reagan. That worked really well - not.

Hillary could skip the 2004 primaries knowing that she would still be well-known in 2008. Turns out she miscalculated--2004 might have been her best chance of winning, but she didn't foresee the Obama phenomenon when she had to decide on whether to contest the 2004 primaries.

Pawlenty and other wannabees don't have that luxury--if Pawlenty does nothing in 2012, by 2016 he'll be totally forgotten.

Hillary knew on the 12 of September, 2001, that a run in 2004 would be foolhardy. It wasn't a miscalculation at all. There are many reasons to curse the name of Osama Bin Ladin, all of them justified, but HRC has an extra reason to curse his name, as along with the thousand he killed in the attacks of Sptember 11, 2001, he also killed her best shot at being the first female President. She took her next best shot in 2008, and came up short. Any attempt further down the road will only make her look like a pathetic loser. She will never be President, and has OBL to blame...

the infowarrior

I figured all along that she wouldn't run in 2004 because she didn't want to face an incumbent when she knew that in 2008 there wouldn't be an incumbent Republican President running for re-election. Plus the 2000 senate race was her first election and she may have calculated that the public wouldn't want someone with only 4 years' experience in office (not knowing that in 2008 the issue of experience wouldn't matter as long as you were a Democrat).

The media after 9/11 never made the connection to Clinton's half-hearted and ineffective response to terrorism in the 1990s, so I don't think that would have been a major consideration with Hillary in deciding whether to run in 2004.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton tried to milk the tragedy for political advantage by insinuating that right-wing talk radio was somehow to blame.

Bush never tried to use the 9/11 attacks for partisan advantage. In return he got Kerry mocking him for not immediately rushing from the classroom when he learned of the attacks and all the rest. The history books will be written by left-wingers who will have Bush near the bottom of the list (taking a more "judicious" stance than present-day academics who claim that he is the worst President ever).

Obama will do his best to take the country to hell in a handbasket, but the media and the academy will be cheering all the way...the only question at this point is whether he will be ranked higher than FDR or a little lower.

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