Posted on 06/01/2011 5:04:39 AM PDT by SJackson
Seventeen months from the 2012 election, the Republican presidential field is unsettled in the extreme. Mitt Romney, the supposed conservative, was considered a liberal four years ago before his miraculous transformation but he still has Romneycare on his resume. Ron Pauls vision is a bit problematic, to say the least as Michael Medved has documented; he thinks the president shouldnt have authorized the killing of Bin Laden, that heroin and cocaine should be legal, and that prostitution is constitutionally protected. Newt Gingrich has spent the last two weeks destroying his conservative following, running desperately for the center in an attempt to claim that empty middle ground as a McCain wannabe. Tim Pawlenty is now being outpolled by Herman Cain. Even Thad McCotter, a wonderful Congressman but an unfeasible presidential candidate in his current position, is considering a run.
The candidate sucking all the air out of the room, of course, is Sarah Palin. Palin has made no secret of the fact that she is considering a 2012 run she would crash through any of open doors that would lead her to the White House, she said back in 2008. Next month, Palins campaign will likely kick off with the release of Steve Bannons The Undefeated, a documentary reviewing Palins accomplishments in Alaska. The film is a call to action for a campaign like 1976, Bannon said to RealClearPolitics. Lets have a good old-fashioned brouhaha.
This week, shes beginning a bus tour across the country. Tim Crawford, treasurer of Palins PAC, explained that Palin was embarking on the tour Because she wants to see how this nation was built and get fired up about that. Or, more realistically, Palins embarking on the tour because shes softening the ground for her big announcement, which will likely come on July 4. Palins not one for subtlety thats her drawback, and thats her charm.
Will it prevent her from winning?
Current polls have her trailing President Obama badly, by 17 percent according to Public Policy Polling. That same poll shows Obama beating Gingrich by 14 and Romney by just 7. Even more disturbing, the poll shows Palins favorability ratings dramatically underwater, at 30 percent. PPP is a Democratic-stacked poll, but these are bad numbers nonetheless.
Oddly enough, Palin is polarizing even within the Republican Party. Seven percent of Republicans who know her strongly dislike her, compared with just 5 percent for Gingrich. The only Republican who ranks lower among Republicans overall is Gingrich, at 29 percent to her 27 percent. By the same token, she blows away the rest of the field in terms of name recognition and favorability (71 percent). In urban areas, Republicans fear that shes not sophisticated enough (false), that shes prone to gaffes (true), and that shell be blown off the stage by Barack Obama (unclear). In rural areas, Republicans love her because theyre not put off by her accent or her corny tics.
The question is whether in this election, Americans will be put off by Palins winking more than theyre attracted to her clarity. Palins strength is her glibness shes able to boil down issues to their bare essence. She knows how shes seen, and she embraces it. Shes purely authentic when she says she wants Gretchen Wilsons Redneck Woman as her cellphone ringtone, shes telling the truth. In this way, shes the polar opposite of President Obama, who loves to obscure issues in a cloud of rhetoric and faux complexity, and who is purely inauthentic. He runs from the fact that he is an ivory tower elitist, alienating Americans with his upturned chin and into-the-future stare.
For all the criticisms of her supposedly rough political abilities, shes navigated the Republican field far more ably than seasoned politicians like Gingrich and Romney. She hasnt declared, and shes already running second. She didnt shoot herself in the foot by embracing liberal politics, and she allowed Donald Trump to play stalking horse on the birth certificate and school records issues. She has never thrown a fellow Republican under the bus (she has praised Romney, Herman Cain, Gingrich, and virtually everyone else who has declared), and she has never promoted a non-conservative candidate for higher office.
She knows her base, and she knows her principles. She smacked Obama on Israel last week with brevity and simplicity: Anyone who studies history, studies the Old Testament, studies geography understands that Israel now is surrounded by enemies at all times. It should be now that America takes a stand in defending our friends in Israel . More than ever, we should be standing strong with Israel and saying, No, you dont have to divide Jerusalem, you dont have to divide your capital city. Then she went even further: Im going to call him our temporary leader because my goal is to make sure that President Obama is not reelected in 2012.
Its that kind of absolute willingness to go after Obama that endears Palin to Republicans. And with Obamas unpopularity on the rise, the economy in a double-dip, and our foreign policy in shambles, more and more Americans want truth spoken to power. Thats why, counterintuitive though it may seem, Palin may be perfectly positioned for 2012.
Ben Shapiro is an attorney and writer, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, and author of the upcoming book Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV from Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. He is also a board member of Declaration Entertainment, an organization dedicated to the creation of conservative film and television content.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/01/can-sarah-win/
What the hell does that even mean?
It means you have a fixation often accompanied by hate or envy or the inability to grasp simple logic. You know, the qualities of the MSM.
and who do you think does the polling??? There are no Conservative pollsters, and no Fox is one of the absolute worst out there.
Reading your posts is very entertaining, I had no idea there were conservatives that believed such things.
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