Has Sarah Palin saved the GOP?

The Washington Post ^ | September 17, 2010 | Paul Goldman, former chairman of Virginia's Democratic Party

[2ndDivisionVet]

Delaware Republicans have proved it: Sarah Palin is the best asset the GOP has right now.

There has been a lot of carping about Republicans' prospects for November since Palin-backed candidate Christine O'Donnell defeated longtime Delaware officeholder Mike Castle for the Republican Senate nomination Tuesday. But contrary to conventional wisdom, the 2008 vice presidential nominee has kept the party strong. How? She has kept the Tea Party faithful inside the GOP tent. Had she instead encouraged these disillusioned voters to mount third-party challenges across the 2010 general-election ballot, dozens of Democratic incumbents, not to mention challengers, would be smiling like Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

That year, a simmering feud between two wings of the Republican Party resulted in the "Bull Moose" independent presidential candidacy of former president Teddy Roosevelt. The Rough Rider's support four years earlier landed William Howard Taft the GOP nomination, but the two had a falling-out. Their disunity allowed Wilson, the governor of New Jersey, to claim the White House with the lowest winning percentage of the popular vote since the two-party era began in 1864. Wilson was only the second Democrat elected president since the Civil War; a GOP united by a temporary, even testy, marriage of convenience would have triumphed easily. But egos proved too large. It did not matter that Wilson was, in TR's term, the "coiner of weasel words."

Establishment Republicans, including former Bush aide Karl Rove, have said this year that the strength of the Tea Party movement has sometimes forced the nomination of contenders with weak prospects for winning a general election. This is surely right; O'Donnell's upset on Tuesday is merely the latest example, but there were similar complaints about the Nevada Senate contest.(continued)

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

....she was a big player in the first big race within a month of the 2008 election.

Exactly correct--she literally saved Saxby Chambliss' bacon.

Chambliss: Palin 'allowed us to peak'

“I can't overstate the impact she had down here,” Chambliss said during an interview Wednesday morning on Fox News."

[dsc]

“Something did happen the day McCain picked her. It’s hard to explain what.”

Could it be that she was a genuine conservative and a decent person, and so many of us had given up on ever getting an acceptable candidate out of the Stupid Party ever again?

[hinckley buzzard]

And the campaign harvested ten million dollars in contributions over the next weekend. Name the last VP candidate who did that for their campaign.

[mmercier]

so.. i hit the ‘disillusioned voters’ line...

lost me there.

[ansel12]

DECEMBER 2, 2008

“Newly reelected Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) credited Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with firing up his base and allowing him to cruise to a victory over Democrat Jim Martin.

“Sarah Palin came in on the last day, did a fly-around and, man, she was dynamite,” Chambliss told Fox News on Wednesday. “We packed the houses everywhere we went. And it really did allow us to peak and get our base fired up.”

Chambliss beat Martin by three points on Nov. 4 but did not reach 50 percent of the vote, making a runoff necessary. However, the incumbent easily beat his challenger Tuesday, more than quadrupling his margin of victory, and in the process kept Democrats from reaching a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Chambliss heaped praise on Palin, saying she has a “great future” in the GOP.”

[PMAS]

well said

[Art in Idaho]

I just had an idea that hit me like a tone of bricks:

Sarah should announce she's running for President on November 3rd! The whole nation would go wild!

[jessduntno]

"Simply put, Palin started as Tonto but has become the Lone Ranger. Instead of fading out last summer, she remained strong and stood by her party. She has become a bridge between the old Republican guard and the growing right-wing dissatisfaction with not just Democrats but also Republican officeholders. Palin's ability to advocate for using the GOP, not a third party, to channel this angst has allowed Republican voter anger to boil, yet not boil over.

Should Republicans run up the score in November, Sarah Palin will deserve a lot of credit she will never get."

There are a couple of nits to pick, but the conclusion, above, is spot on, if he is saying that she will not get the credit she deserves from the party, which I think is what he is trying to say.

I think this is a perfect synopsis for her talent. The way she has used the free wheeling county totting aspect of her political celebrity has strengthened us by not splitting us into two parties. I was ready for that; but I thin she may have single-handedly prevented it. She is unique.

This guy is a jagov, as my friends from Pittsburgh might say, but he has this right.

[Lancey Howard]

Maybe she has saved my country.

[Aria]

I went to volunteer at the local Portland, Oregon GOP headquarters the morning after her convention speech and the leader smiled at me and apologized saying “I think you can understand...we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed”.

But of course then the MSM got busy to destroy her instead of vetting zero and you know the rest.

[jessduntno]

“She delivered oxygen when we were suffocating.”

I’m not sure, but I may have been standing during parts of her first speech. It was brilliant. The MSM drowned out the brilliance of that performance.

[Minn]

Wait a minute. How can a complete idiot, country hick save a political party?

The "Palin is dumb" crowd grows smaller and smaller, and dumber and dumber.

[Lancey Howard]

Interesting take.

Indeed, especially coming from the a former Democratic Party chairman.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I like the way you think...

[Michael.SF.]

I don't know how history will treat her,

Well since the libs write the history books, the answer seems apparent.

but I think she'll go down with Reagan as a great, great American.....

Shall we wait until 2012 before we raise her to that level?

[Carry_Okie]

Did you read the whole thing or guess at what it said from the headline?

I was operating from the premise that there is no such thing as bad press compared to being ignored. IMO the media is promoting Palin in a left handed fashion, hoping that by their derision they'll simultaneously poison the center while conservatives take the bait.

[ansel12]

so.. i hit the ‘disillusioned voters’ line... lost me there.

Republicans and conservatives were terribly disillusioned after the 2008 election and the cries for Governor Palin to lead a third party effort were being shouted from the roof tops, instead Palin has been rebuilding the GOP itself, and replacing many of it's major players with better ones while also bringing in new blood and energy among the voter base, all while putting fear and uncertainty (and a smidgen of compliance) into the hearts of the national party leaders.

[pissant]

no

[MEG33]

It was wonderful..