Posted on 12/27/2009 10:40:42 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I have in the past been a skeptic of Sarah Palin. Not of her political talent, which is considerable, but of her grasp of – and even interest in – substantive policy issues.
When she abruptly resigned the governorship of Alaska on July 3rd, I wondered if she simply hadn’t the stomach for national politics. And the rambling, disjointed speech she gave that day left me wondering if she even knew why she was making such a momentous and potentially career-crippling decision.
But then a funny thing happened: In November, Mrs. Palin debuted her memoir “Going Rogue” with great sales, which was not a surprise, but also with a luminous and successful press tour, which was. The interviews she gave in promotion for her book (at least the ones that I saw) were much improved from those given during the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin seemed to speak about both herself and national issues with greater verve and confidence.
Other stars are aligning for Palin:
Several of her potential rivals for the 2012 Republican nomination find themselves suddenly, perhaps fatally, compromised by recent events.
Mitt Romney, for example, is watching the national health care debate work against his presidential ambitions, as the tortured and torturous Senate bill resembles more and more the regime he helped institute in Massachusetts – not something that will endear him to conservative primary voters enraged at Democrats’ health care offensive.
And there is Mike Huckabee, who charmed his way into a television hosting gig at FOX News after the campaign. Revelations that a man suspected of shooting and killing four police officers in Washington state had been granted clemency years ago by Huckabee, then governor of Arkansas, are widely believed to have seriously damaged his future electoral chances.
As a result, should they decide to run again both Romney and Huckabee will certainly find their respective tenures as governor under renewed and perhaps unwelcome scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Palin appears to be having a ball, trading comedic blows with William Shatner on the Tonight Show, receiving throngs of adoring fans at bookstores across the heartland, and weighing in on global warming in the pages of The Washington Post.
Could she be preparing, in a serious way, to become a serious candidate? It certainly looks that way to this amateur Palin watcher. If she can convince independent voters that she understands the issues, has thought them through and come to reasonable judgments about possible courses of action…if, if, if.
A lot of stars have yet to align for Palin’s path to the presidency to be illuminated. But that no longer seems impossible to me. In fact, I can now quite clearly imagine that someday, someone may say the words “Madam President,” to a moose-hunting mom from Alaska.
Wouldn’t that be something?
I hope Palin brings a bad ass AG to go after the Socialists Crooks inhabiting Washington.
If things don’t change dramatically I think whoever the GOP candidate is may coast to victory...but Palin may have the toughest time of it.
DeMint is looking awfully good.
Palin-Bachmann 2012
You’re bringing up the rear here, Matt. Way, way in the rear.
But at least you appear to be tottering in the right direction.
Keep it up, boy. You can get there. Yes, you can.
I know it’s fantasizing, but how about Ted Nugent for AG?
YEOW !!
If you mention DeMint to most voters they’ll say “What, does my breath stink?”
Just as long as John Bolton is Secretary of State!
Demint/Palin
IF 15 million donors each gave Sarah $20 for a campaign, she would be well enough funded to seriously win the Presidential position, IMO.
I raised over $40,000 for Fred during the short time he was in the race. See my tagline...
I was sleeping in my friend’s house in Anchorage and I had a dream about Palin and the 2012 election:
She runs on a platform of calling for a Constitutional convention to restore the republic. She wins and asks the states to convene a convention, which most do (I think you need 3/4 of the states to ask, but hey, I’m dreaming).The convention meets much like the one in Philadelphia, but this one is meeting at a place like the Sheep Mountain Lodge, so it’s hard for the press to get to and easy for the conventioneers to remain private. They emerge with a document that is a beautiful combination of the original Constitution, with some minor fixes - term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, a clause that reflects Ward Connerly’s initiatives, a more robust role for the states, a single flat tax that all citizens must pay, better relations with indigenous people - and the country is transformed, with New England, Michigan, and New York splitting off on their own, California and Oregon in chaos, but the rest of the country solidly behind it - and then the western provinces of Canada petition for inclusion, along with the Bahamas... and as I woke up I had a vision of being able to take the interstate all the way from Edmonton up through the Yukon to Fairbanks and out to Nome, where a free people were once again prosperous.
Maybe it was that mushroom pizza at the Moose’s Tooth. In either way, I’m at the point of wiping the whole thing clean and starting over.
I sure wish they would. These people need to be held accountable.
DeMint IS awfully good. But for any conservative President to succeed someone needs to herd the cats in the Senate. Now, to succeed we’ll obviously also need a lot of new blood there, to take the majority both de jure and de facto. I hope some of the new members will help, but see no one but DeMint capable of getting things through the Senate in the face of a full on Democratic blockade. We can’t afford to promote him out of there; promote him instead to Majority Leader. He’ll be President Palin’s MVP.
Watch it, son.
He really has. I do wonder though how well he’ll sell in states like New Hampshire, Ohio and a few other states.
I don’t know what the electoral demographics are for 2012 but we at least need to win all Bush ‘00 states to take it back. I wonder if DeMint might scare off the more libertarian leaning elements, just based on his record in South Carolina. Having said that, I think he would make an excellent floor leader I wouldn’t be surprised to see a coup on McConnell next year.
I still think our best bet is to go with a successful governor like Barbour or Riley. If Lingle wasn’t pro-choice she would be ideal.
Huh? What should I be watching?
DeMint is great. But he comes off as too fundamental in his social conservatism to appeal nationwide. It’s the economic liberty leg of the stool, not the social conservatism, that has to take the most weight in a broad coalition.
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