I think she's suffering from the common fallacy that the same 110 million people vote every election though.
What loses us elections is when we run a RINO like McCain, millions and millions of people who would vote Conservative, stay home. Run a Reagan against some mutt like Mondale and those folks will come out and at a roughly equal rate, left leaning moderates will not identify with either and they'll stay home.
There's probably 150 million people who will/can/intermittently vote. You just have to get the right 56 million of them to come out.
Owl_Eagle
“When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didn’t just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
‘Look, here’s what happened.’"
-Slow Joe Biden
I wish I could find the data, but I saw a STUNNING statistic once. I have to check if it held true this election, but my initial reaction is that it did.
Liberal turnout is CONSTANT. (note that obamarama got nowhere near the landslides he predicted)
So it is CONSERVATIVE TURNOUT that controls every election
Run a RINO like McLAME (or McSTUPID as someone yelled at me for calling him) and WE DISHEARTEN OUR BASE and they stay home.
Unfortunately, the only demographic that has consistently voted for Republicans the last 30 years or so is dying off. McCain only carried the over 60 crowd. When Reagan ran for re-election (my first), there were very strong college Republican organizations on campuses. I know because I was very active in one. The Republican presence on US college campuses today is, for all practical purposes a "fringe" movement. This is troubling.
On November 6th, 2008 I was absolutely convinced that McCain would win (and comfortably), regardless what the polls said. Since then, I have taken a long, and admittedly painful look at the Republican brand shelf life, and I'm deeply saddened, and a more than a little afraid.
Even if I stipulate that your position about Conservatives staying home is accurate (which, I think is iffy at best), then what does that say about these conservatives. If you can't get fired up about defeating the most liberal, unqualified and mysterious candidate in the history of the Republic, what will fire you up.
I'm hoping that there is some unknown, yet to be discovered candidate that can re-ignite the conservative movement amonst young people. Sarah Palin did make the election closer than it might have been, but she didn't bring any NEW voters to the table. She just fired up the base. That's the HUGE difference between she and Reagan. Reagan fired up the base and brought a new generation into the party. I'm afraid that is what Obama has done for the Democrats. And, until Republicans and their leadership come to terms with this new dynamic, there won't be much of a future the party on a national level.