I was astounded by the stupidity of the Charles Blow column John linked to, and I say that as someone who already thought Blow was a moron. The entire basis for the column was the idea that teh left’s attacks on Sarah Palin have made her more popular. Let’s leave aside the “even the liberal Politico” angle and focus on this: he gave no evidence that Sarah Palin has become more popular recently. In fact, her favorability has stayed more or less the same over the past year, that is to stay, it has stayed very low. She continues to be among the frontrunners for the 2012 presidential election, if the polls and InTrade are to be be believed, but from a Democratic perspective, that’s a feature, not a bug, right? If you want Obama to be re-elected in 2012 (as I do) how can you not be happy that a candidate who is wildly unpopular with the electorate as large is looking like she might be Obama’s general election opponent?
I don’t think that Ben Smith and Mark Halperin should spent 30 hours a week monitoring Sarah Palin’s Facebook page and twitter feed, that’s bad journalism. But it’s a rare example of bad journalism that helps Democrats.
Can anyone deny that making Sarah Palin the face of the Republican party is bad for the Republican party? The favorability polls and such may be nonsense, but her Mini Me, Christine O’Donnell, was crushed in a race that Mike Castle would have won.
For all her craziness, O’Donnell would have been functionally equivalent to Castle as a Senator — both would have voted with Republican leadership 100% of the time. It may be a stretch to say that Palin would be functionally equivalent to John Thune as a president — Thune would be less likely to invade Iran or put a piranha-filled moat along the Mexican border — but I don’t think a president Palin would be that much worse than a president Thune.
The trouble with Thune, and with the older Republican daddies, is that there is a chance that they will be seen as reasonable, sober-minded, corn-fed motherfuckers. There’s not that much chance of that with Palin. Most people already think she’s a whack job. They’re right. On the other hand, they may not know that John Thune is a whack job too.
It’s true that some Republicans might vote for Palin in a primary just to piss liberals off, but that’s all the more reason for liberals to act like she pisses them off. I get sick of Sarah Palin, but if, in some small way, we can help make her the nominee by taking about her endlessly here, then I’m all for talking about her endlessly here.
kdaug
If I were a Dem tactician, I couldn’t have come up with a better article myself.
An entire article about how he’ll never write about her again? About how she’s just more and more popular? About how much the “left” just hates (and I mean hates) her?
How better to seal her nomination?
Yutsano
I totally get the psy-op angle. The problem is if she runs (almost certain now) and loses (barring a total idiocy attack also fairly certain) she will still find a way to stay relevant. It’s a Mean Girl trick: you can only stay on top of the Mean Girl heap if all the attention stays focused on you. Her being defeated by Obama won’t stop her. She has a large and fiercely loyal following now. She will milk that for all it’s worth before finally flaming out. Hopefully by the first plastic surgery.
cleek
the general public is astoundingly ignorant.
the GOP just won a landslide election by simultaneously running on the evils of big government socialized medicine while accusing the evil Dems of cutting Medicaid. they won by telling people that Obama had raised their taxes. they just won the tax battle by relying on the press not to tell anyone how our tax system actually works.
if the GOP establishment accepts Palin, they’ll sell her. and the public will believe what the GOP tells them. and the Dems will stand around and let it happen. again.
scarshapedstar
God I would rage so hard. I would kill myself if she won the GOP Primary. Yep. I sure hope that Republicans don’t vote for her en masse because it would totally demoralize and destroy the Democratic party forever and ever.
And, let me reiterate, it would really piss me off. For the record, I am a male-to-female transexual teaching all-male ballet in San Francisco, and I moonlight as an abortionist. I eat only granola and wear only hemp and drive an after-market Prius modified to run on a go-kart engine that doesn’t go above 35 mph, and like any good leftie I drive in the left lane. I cry whenever I watch South Park because they constantly remind me how uncool I am.
Just so everyone understands, if Sarah Palin wins the primary, it will shatter the hopes of… Me, the World’s Biggest Liberal.
Gee, I sure hope no Republicans catch wind of this.
mr. whipple
The hope, er, thought of her winning the primary might make me do something crazy, like send her money.
Joey Maloney
Wow, that was a plot twist I didn’t see coming. :-)
I’m going to take issue with one part of this: the idea that head-trauma-crazy Senator Christine O’Donnell would be “functionally equivalent” to very-serious-person Senator Mike Castle. Yes, it’s true that the Republican with the veneer of sanity will cast exactly the same votes as the Teatard, but the further mainstreaming of the crazy in public discourse is not a negligible side issue. People who hold elective office (or who have held elective office) get more attention than they otherwise deserve, and the more a Louis Gohmert or a Michelle Bachmann shows up on C-SPAN and FOX spouting their lunacy, the more that lunacy gets injected into the public consciousness and accepted as a reasonable point of view.
Media personalities love to interview them because they can be counted to say something batshit insane that will drive traffic. The last thing they will do is fact-check them in real time (if at all) because then the next time their booker might not get her calls returned.
scarshapedstar
@mr. whipple:
Money? Dude, I will work for her primary campaign, register Republican so I can vote for her, whatever it takes.
The Dangerman
@scarshapedstar:
You wouldn’t happen to be an illegal immigrant or a member of the New Black Panther Party?
mr. whipple
I’m skeert. She’s so strong and smart, not to mention babe-a-licious. She’ll crush Obama.
Yutsano
@cleek: This little thing called the economy had a big hand in all that too. Mostly because of that voters went with their guts over their heads and just voted the guy out. All the polls I have seen don’t show a sea change of support for Republican ideas over Democratic ones. They just wanted SOMETHING to help, anything. It wasn’t rational by any means. They’re about to get a huge case of buyer’s remorse when UI doesn’t get renewed and no stimulus happens until at least 2013.
Hal
I am so completely unfazed by a Sarah Palin Presidential run that if she does win the nomination, I will write Oprah a letter volunteering to be the guy she leans against and cries on in Bryant Park in 2012.
She has yet to do a press conference, a town hall, an interview with anyone not on Fox News, and as hapless and pathetic as the MSM can be, even Palin won’t get away with running a campaign from Twitter and Facebook only.
Many people have said before. 100% name recognition + 2/3 or more of Moderates, Independents and (of course) Dems thinking your unqualified does not a winning Candidate make.
DougJ
@Joey Maloney:
How much more mainstream could the crazy get? I think it’s maxed out at 28%, I believe in the crazification factor. The trouble is that the other 72%, or at least the 22% of that that votes Republican without being totally crazy, isn’t paying enough attention.
Joey Maloney
What put my previous comment into moderation?
Comrade Luke
The media will work overtime to make sure it’s a close race, regardless of who is running. It’s in their best interests.
Who exactly is on the Democrats bench btw? I have no idea.
WyldPirate
@cleek:
Damn, cleek. Here I was just thinking that I was the most pessimistic motherfucker on this blog.
I see I’m going to have to work on my game.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Comrade Luke: You mean for 2016? Basically, no one. Unless Brian Schweitzer(present Governor of Montana) runs.
Joey Maloney
@DougJ: That the non-crazy voting public doesn’t pay enough attention, is kind of my point. They hear this stuff about death panels and secret Kenyan Islamofascism out of the corner of the ear, so to speak, and it just kind of lodges there. Most people still privilege info they heard on “The News”, accepting it less critically than what crazy Uncle Joe spouts across the Thanksgiving Day table.
And so these things get injected into the public discourse without ever being subject to any kind of rational scrutiny. They become things that “everyone knows” or “some people say” and there’s no way to effectively counter that some people are liars or stupid or just flat wrong.
patrick II
Palin winning the nomination and then losing the presidential race sounds good — but I would never want her that close to the presidency. If the economy goes into the tank — like it almost did in 2008 — and Palin is running, there is some chance, however little, that she might win. People thought about letting her get close to the presidency once when she ran with McCain, we seem to forget that McCain/Palin were in a dead heat or even slightly ahead in the polls until the wall street seizure assured Obama’s victory.
There is George Bush dumb, and then there is Palin dumb. We all suffered through one, I don’t want any chance at all of second.
Comrade Luke
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
I mean any time from now going forward. I don’t see anyone, anywhere poised to take a leadership position in the party.
asiangrrlMN
You know, I would like to pooh-pooh and scoff and say no way in hell Palin wins. I cannot. I think there is a very slim chance she would actually stay in the running for the whole campaign, an even slimmer chance she would get elected, and the slimmest of all chances she would actually remain president (and not quit in the first two months because being a president is haaaaard), but I’m not as sure about her not being elected as I would like to be. My state, by most accounts, is pretty liberal. The house and senate just flipped Republican, and we are having a recount for governor–with a Republican candidate who is to the right of Palin and just as stupid.
slag
Don’t make me capture this blog, DougJ. I will do it.
Tim
DougJ, why in the world would you want Obama re-elected? Masochism?
With Palin in the White House at least we would know who the enemy is. And the Dems in Congress could simply adopt current Republican methods of assuring that even though they are in the minority, they still call all the shots. You know, since Obama has shown that the Presidency is completely at the mercy of whomever is in the Congressional minority.
So Palin would be unable to do any damage and at least we wouldn’t have to listen to Obama lie to us about whose side he’s on.
freelancer
DougJ, you’re recycling. Step it up, dood.
No, really.
https://balloon-juice.com/2009/11/13/when-the-levi-breaks/
Tim
Also too: Those of you who are so arrogantly certain that Palin would lose to Obama, don’t forget that Al Gore managed to hand the presidency to Bush Fucking Dumbass Bush.
No victory is safe from the Democratic knack for turning it into a defeat.
Martin
@DougJ: Yeah, that’s the very problem, but it’s also why I don’t think Obama isn’t hurting his chances here. It’s not the remaining 72% he needs to get, after all. The left has their 27% that will vote for him no matter what.
So 54% of the turnout is already spoken for. Obama needs to win over the remaining 46% of those that will vote. That’s the key. The folks that stay home don’t matter, and the ones that vote at least pay cursory attention to politics. So, the remaining 46% aren’t us. They aren’t Fox watchers, at least to any serious degree. No, they’re the ones that are most likely to look at Obama trying to fix shit and give him credit, even if he gives up too much. Assuming the left doesn’t do the job of the right at Obama character assassination.
Xopher
Ugh. I hate saying this.
They said “wouldn’t it be great if Ronald Reagan got the GOP nomination? He’d never be elected, of course…it would ensure a Carter victory!”
They said “wouldn’t it be great if George W. Bush got the GOP nomination? He’d never be elected, of course…it would ensure a Gore victory!”
Let’s not be so happy about a prospective Palin nomination, huh? There’s NO ONE so appalling that the US electorate might not elect them. And if Palin becomes President…well, no place on the planet will really be safe, but life becomes pretty untenable in the United States.
PanAmerican
@cleek:
That’s the nut of it. Her VP pick would be the tell. Given what we know of her and her inner circle dynamics, taking Jeb and acquiescing to a figurehead role isn’t likely. Which means they throw her an anchor and co-opt her fan base with the Tea Party.
She’s a two bit hustler in a film noir who has found a MacGuffin. They can’t help but over rate their own skills and have no idea how ruthless their adversaries are.
DougJ
@Tim:
You know who else they said that kind of thing about?
DougJ
@freelancer:
I know, I know. It’s worse than that, I took that title from a commenter who suggested it in the comments.
Menzies
@Comrade Luke:
This is what worries me. You’ve got a lot of Democrats who are either cut from the Heath Shuler mold or who clearly want to run for other positions in the states.
There’s a few in the Senate. Sheldon Whitehouse comes out every few months and says something incredibly badass and then goes back to his den. Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley have actually been trying to get progressive legislation passed. The problem is they’re all freshmen and there’s no way they’re going to get anywhere in a body as bound to seniority as the Senate.
In the House, I guess you’ve got Anthony Weiner (who wants to run for Mayor of NYC anyway), DWS, aaaaaand that’s kind of it. A goodly portion of the bench got stomped in November, so unless they come back in the states, there’s no one riding pine.
Also, too, “corn-fed motherfucker” needs to become general parlance. Posthaste.
freelancer
@DougJ:
My second point is, where the hell was the Ombudsman on this issue?
kdaug
@DougJ:
I think she’s crossed the line with the “blue-bloods”. Establishment doesn’t want her, won’t support her, and sees her as dangerous to future prospects.
I don’t think the Supremes are going to jump in for her, either.
Quite the different wicket than Georgie.
She’s a loose cannon. If she can’t be controlled, she’ll be put down. Murdoch/Ailes don’t give a shit, they’re in it for the payolla. But Scowcroft, Powell, Baker, Bush et.al. are not going to sit down.
It’s why you may have seen Powell doing the joint diggie with Obama last weekend.
Shots across the bow. “Palin will not stand”.
Can the control the beast they’ve created? It will be fun to find out. But in any case, the estab. is pulling up the drawbridges.
Ailuridae
@Tim:
With Palin in the White House at least we would know who the enemy is. And the Dems in Congress could simply adopt current Republican methods of assuring that even though they are in the minority, they still call all the shots. You know, since Obama has shown that the Presidency is completely at the mercy of whomever is in the Congressional minority.
Did you vote for Ralph Nader in 2000?
Jman
…digby says
Of all the things that should have gone beyond bad for the Republican party like torture, domestic spying, wars of aggression, squandering Clinton’s budget surplus and creating ten trillion dollars of national debt, letting the economy fall into the Great Recession and so on…what is bad for the Republican party probably isn’t diddly. If it really is the economy and if unemployment is still at 9 percent in 2012, or any number of other crazy things trigger mass dissatisfaction, then all this invincible bravado will be just hilarious when the 2012 election comes. Be afraid, be very shaking in your shoes, p-ing your pants, totally skeerd.
BGinCHI
What’s Broder gonna say if Palin runs?
My guess is he finally takes the gloves off after all those years of shitty punditry. Headline of his first column?
That Bitch is Crazy, Yo.
Maybe finally the DC press wouldn’t be wired for the GOp.
WyldPirate
Damn, I foresee a battle royal tomorrow if someone FPs a post on Frank Rich’s column.
All the President’s Captors:
and Rich is just really getting warmed up….
Jim Newell
Dangerous game you play, Doug. She is spectacularly good for media and viewership, and she will be the only candidate outlets cover. They will have a bigger financial stake than usual to keep it close. The pillorying she’ll take all day for 2 years can’t make people hate her much more, and stupid independents, who don’t exactly care for Obama, will feel sympathetic for her. She’s enjoys playing the victim. And if she tones down her schtick even a TOUCH — isn’t constantly mean and stupid and lying at full volume all the time — I can see it already, on every cable channel, in every fluffy newspaper, across the Washington Post (every columnist): “The New, Serious Statesman, Sarah Palin.”
She will say anything — “death panels” — and can move the debate sharply to the right in a heartbeat. Once she has the GOP nomination, the entire party will be in lockstep with her. And keep in mind that the GOP nominee will probably spend $1+ billion to win this election.
I still think it’s unlikely that she’d win, but she certainly could, which would be the apocalypse. It’s easy to say that she wouldn’t be much different from any other, more acceptable smiling hack, but come on, that’s crap. George W. Bush was terrible, but at least he could get through the day.
And if Obama won, Christ, how pyrrhic would that shit be? He’d start promising to nuke Iran and ban Muslims from existing, to overzealously keep in touch with the rapidly rightward-moving center.
A presidential election like this isn’t something you want to start running savvy trick plays with, and it’s not there for anyone’s entertainment. I just want the GOP to pick the most competent-seeming, bland hack who could at least keep the government functioning for four years (Romney, Pawlenty, whatever) should he win. It will keep Obama on his toes. And if he can’t find a way to beat Mitt Romney, there’s something wrong with him anyway.
Say what you will now, but you will NOT like listening to her around the clock for two full years. I’d feel genuinely embarrassed for humanity, having to put up with this crap because it makes people money.
BGinCHI
@Ailuridae: California Clipper next Friday? Unofficial B-J night out, though mostly my friends and maybe Nate Silver will be there. Unless he had to move to NYC after his blog moved to the Times.
DougJ
@kdaug:
Yes, that’s exactly how I see it.
Comrade Luke
Shocking: a company run by a wingnut gets involved with WikiLeaks.
PayPal cuts off WikiLeaks.
Maybe John can give Assange a few pointers on how to deal with PayPal.
robertdsc-PowerBook
LMAO at this being a Broder column.
BGinCHI
@Jim Newell:
What? I think this moves the window left, like “look what we just avoided.” People not included in the 27% who are fucking crazy will come to their senses and vote for anyone who has the brains not to totally fuck this country up for years. McCain fooled no one, so caribou barbie won’t either.
Unless her running mate is Kelsey Grammer.
suzanne
@Yutsano:
Too late, methinks. Not to get all Trig-birther, but I’d be willing to bet she had a tummy tuck before he was born.
Chris
I’m torn between the logic of “let’s pile on Palin, because it’ll keep her popular with conservatives, who’ll then nominate her out of simple spite” and “let’s hope Republicans nominate someone less batshit-insane, in case they win, since the media’s going to want a close race and
godthe Supreme Court knows what happens when we have those.”But I think it’s worth piling on for one simple reason: Democrats, including liberals, need to get better at political derision: mocking the shit out of their opponents, to make would-be voters less likely to support them.
Okay, two reasons, actually; the second one involves the “stop beating a dead horse” principle. Democrats often act like they’re more afraid of being accused of being mean and partisan (as in, “Hey, you don’t need to beat a dead horse!”) than of making sure that some opposing candidacy or idea has been sufficiently countered and rejected. It’d be nice to drum Sarah Palin out of politics entirely (seriously, she’s like a lazier Dubya; it shouldn’t be hard), and if we can assure victory in the 2012 presidential race as well it’s a nice coincidence, but it’s worth rhetorically pounding her for being a complete fucking moron because if we don’t, we run the risk of the media legitimizing her as “popular.”
Though Charles Blow would probably say that anyway, since he just makes shit up to appease her fan base.
Who have apparently endowed the position of ombudsman at the Post.
DougJ
@Jim Newell:
I will like listening to her around the clock for two years. It sure beats the hell out of listening to John Thune around the clock for four years.
The only drawback of a Palin nomination will be that Bobo won’t back her. Hearing him tell us all what a genius Mitt Romney or John Thune is was something I was looking forward to.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I think Ol’ Lady Bush’s shot at Palin expresses the Blue Blood Republican thoughts about her:
They don’t like her one bit.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: Is this the same Frank Rich who had an irrational hatred of Al Gore? Again with the “humiliating” “weakness” stuff. The Republicans mouthed platitudes after the meeting too, but somehow that didn’t amount to “weakness.” I really don’t get it. Hundreds of people seem to have reacted in this way, including a few reasonably intelligent ones, but I just don’t understand it. Human beings. Weird.
Chris
@Chris:
Crap, I just realized under the twin rules of “everything means we live in a center-right country” and “whatever Democrats/liberals like, want, do, or say is inherently less popular than whatever conservatives/Republicans prefer”, my description here:
“we run the risk of the media legitimizing [Palin] as ‘popular.’”
is, actually, inevitable: because Democrats/liberals don’t like Palin, that means conservatives/Republicans will support her reflexively, and because the media will support the conservative/Republican narrative over the Democratic/liberal narrative, Palin *must* be more popular.
Even if she’s not. She just has to be, because of the dominant logic of the establishment media.
Ailuridae
@BGinCHI:
Done and doner. The Clipper is usually a little too hipster for my tastes but I can certainly get over there.
Maybe I’ll skirt you and some of your friends over to Archie’s around the corner.
FlipYrWhig
@suzanne: IMHO, her face has the peculiar shine that comes from the celebrity plastic surgeon’s touch. She doesn’t look the same as she did two years ago, and while the same can be said for most of us, something’s off, and I’ve been saying so for months. I don’t think it’s just styling, I think it’s alteration.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jim Newell:
Boy are you ever the optimist!
Jim Newell
@BGinCHI: This will happen:
Palin: “Let’s re-segregate schools”
Entire GOP establishment (yes, ALL of them — George Bush Sr’s friends, too — in a presidential election they want): “THIS IS A PERFECT IDEA!”
Wolf Blitzer, 2 hours later: “Democrats don’t want to segregate schools. But Republicans do? What do you think? Let’s bring in Paul Begala and Bill Bennett…”
And it would just build like that. It was easier for everyone to laugh the GOP stunts away in 2008 because they were at their absolute nadir and Democrats at their peak. (And Obama won 53-47, jesus). Now the movement’s in their favor.
The most “thank god we avoided that batshit crazy clown” candidates ain’t supposed to make it to major party nominations. If one of them suddenly does, I don’t trust the rest of the obviously broken system to do the clean-up work.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: Well, the media definitely treats her as a lot more popular than she actually is.
(I was going to make a crack about how there wouldn’t be a reality show about the last losing Democratic VP nominee, and then I realized that John Edwards _totally_ has a life suited for a reality show.)
BGinCHI
@Ailuridae: OK, I think we’re on. Will confirm later next week.
Probably 9ish or 10 at the Clipper and then we’ll see about mischief. With the demise of Tuman’s Alcohol Abuse Center and being married now I need some new places….
Yutsano
@Jim Newell:
Umm…no it’s not. Republicans aren’t necessarily more popular than Democrats. In fact very few politicians are at this moment. Republicans won mostly because they were the only alternative period. Anything going beyond that simple fact is overthinking and/or projecting.
WarMunchkin
I dunno, it doesn’t excuse, say, TPM reporting on her tweets so much. I don’t care. It’s a given that she says crazy things. I don’t need to be prod to elicit an angry response every time someone from the GOP says something, and the public doesn’t really pay attention until election time, unless a Democrat says something “outrageous”.
America’s tweetheart. Sheesh. Did anyone check whether Geraldine Ferraro got this kind of attention from 84 to 88?
BGinCHI
@Ailuridae: OK, they have Hamms and a pool table.
I’ll drink Ketel, but I’m a sharky fucking pool player.
BGinCHI
@Jim Newell: Money already re-segregated the schools while no one except educators and the left were watching.
OK, not all of them, but it’s pretty nasty.
We need more consciousness-raising, and maybe Palin extreme would bring that.
suzanne
@FlipYrWhig: I’m with ya. I have a feeling that plastic surgery is the reason she didn’t release her medical records. She trades too much on her looks to risk admitting she’s had work done—it would come off as elitist and vain to Real ‘Murkinz. Plus, I think she really buys into the effortless perfection myth… she was a beauty queen, after all.
Jim Newell
@DougJ: Ah but no, if she isn’t running, we’ll hear about 10 different people for 1.5 years, and then have a normal election. She is unique. (FWIW, i don’t think she’d necessarily make it out of the primaries, especially if Huckabee runs. They’d kill each other off, most likely.)
David Brooks WILL endorse her, too! All of them will. Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, Barbara Bush, whoever else. If she gets the nomination, they’ll just pretend like they never said anything bad about her before. They’ll campaign with her! I guarantee you. I guarantee you real American ameros.
Ailuridae
@BGinCHI:
Tuman’s is still there although greatly sanitized.
Archie’s is a pretty great joint. They have package goods and sell Bell’s and similar for takeout until 2 for like 10 a sixer. They also have a monthly microbrew pint at 2 or 3.
Let me know the details but meeting at the Clipper seems like a go.
Comrade Luke
@Jim Newell: Can’t you just write the “This isn’t the Sarah Palin of 2010” articles?
FFS, for the prime example of this look no further than John MF McCain.
Chuck Butcher
The idea that the plutocrats are afraid of her just won’t fly. The mainstream GOP hacks may not like her at all and be a bit afraid of her, but money and power know how to coopt a grifter. She’ll give them anything they want with proper handling and sell it to her base. I doubt it would work enough to make two terms but thinking they’re going to axe her because they’re spooked is wishful thinking. They’ve bought a hell of a lot better than her with ease.
Whatever the Roves and etc think of her once nominated she’ll be the snow queen and the sparkles will be manufactured.
I’d be crazy to say more than that a General win is possible given proper circumstances. Such a win is really scary since it would also mean sufficient discontent to mean House and Senate GOP majorities. That could mean a bunch of crazies elected and even making law…
As for the more competent ones, they might give away a little less of the store, but I wouldn’t count on it – they’d just know what they’re giving away.
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
Naw flip, that’s not it.
I was reading in People magazine the other day that she’s using Grizzly Bear jizz as her new moisturizer. They even said she collects it herself.
FlipYrWhig
@Chuck Butcher: My prediction is that if Palin is the Republican nominee, Bloomberg runs as an independent, essentially as a social liberal who is strong on defense and terrorism, like a non-deranged Giuliani. And he gets people like Crist involved, maybe Lieberman too. Hell, maybe Jon Stewart. If people are sick of both Democrats and Republicans, they could win. I don’t know what they’d do to govern, but, we’ll see. Odds?
Jim Newell
@Yutsano: “Republicans won mostly because they were the only alternative period.”
Are any new alternative major parties expected to emerge for the 2012 presidential election?
I enjoy hearing alternate takes on this and hope that my worst fears don’t come true. But they tend to come true these days!
And yes, the “movement” is sadly in Republicans favor heading into this election, even if it’s won cheap. No one really likes them, and no one really wants them for anything resembling a set of policy proposals. But the structural factors against Obama will still be pretty horrific, and I don’t see Boehner or McConnell pulling a self-induced Gingrichian implosion over the next two years.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: Oh, yeah, I heard about that stuff. Sold under the brand name “Grizm.” “Ever wonder what makes Mama Grizzlies so fierce?”
tkogrumpy
Well,I read the linked Blow article and I can’t see what is notable about it. It is a plain vanilla take that is not the least unreasonable, and will have many readers nodding their head in agreement. I don’t happen to be one of them, but I’ve spent my life on the fringes and don’t often expect to agree with the majority.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim Newell:
Not yet. Watch for it (see above).
tkogrumpy
And Sarah Palin will never, never get the nomination for the same reason Howard dean couldn’t. They can’t be controlled.
Yutsano
@Jim Newell:
I do. Neither is anywhere near as smart as Gingrich is nor are they going to be able to tame the worst impulses of their caucuses. They can’t stuff the Tea Party genie back in the bottle, and to make a margarita out of my metaphors here they will have to ride that tiger for a helluva lot longer than eight seconds. Couple this with the fact that the American people aren’t total morons and the end result will be Republican overreach that will send the electorate back to the Democrats. It won’t be a fun two years, especially if you are hurting right now, but after the Republicans produce no results the Democrats can simply present themselves as an alternative.
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
LOL. FlipYrWhig FTW.
Calouste
@Chuck Butcher:
Whether the GOP establishment will throw their support behind Palin or whether they will torpedo her will be decided before the primaries even start and depend on who she hires on her team. If she uses Karl Rove’s Rolodex for recruiting, she shows she’s ready to be handled and she will be supported. If she uses the Wasilla highschool yearbook, as she has been doing up to now, things will get rather messy.
Nellcote
I’m looking foreward to the Joe McGinniss bio of LaPalin next year.
Comrade Luke
@Yutsano:
Of course, the slight problem with that is there are significantly more Democrat senators up for re-election next time, and the alternative to them are Republicans.
TheYankeeApologist
@tkogrumpy:
Just off the top of my head – it’s notable that this is what passes for op-ed journalism in our fair country. It’s, as someone noted above, an article about how people shouldn’t write articles about Sarah Palin anymore. It feels like a fucking Monty Python skit to me . . . I can’t believe people get paid to do this.
As far as the article not being unreasonable, he did refer to Politico as a left-leaning source, not to mention making the completely spurious point that our lefty gang-bashing of her ridiculous existence only validates her politically. That seems beyond unreasonable, moving into Ignorance Country.
Jim Newell
@Yutsano: Boehner and McConnell don’t have the flair for crazy showmanship like Gingrich did. And they’re old DC hacks, they’re not going to let anything too out of the ordinary happen. Tea Partiers are full of shit, and will bend towards the party will, like all Republicans. They talk like they won’t extend the debt ceiling, but Wall Street and big business didn’t purchase them congressional seats to kill their bonds overnight.
Chuck Butcher
@FlipYrWhig:
Bloomberg has 2nd A problems of huge dimensions and that will count against him horridly and the NRA and every gun organization will see to it. He’s hated with a white hot heat, and justifiably. He has other difficulties, he’s a bankster and he’s a NYer. Mainline Ds won’t go for him as an alternative and SP’s base would loath him.
Now Ds have not shed the gun thing entirely but they’ve managed to take some heat out of it and can take more out. Bloomberg is fucked. What he can do is pick off the establishment Rs and some plutocratically inclined NAs (Is). I don’t know who he’d hurt worst with his issues.
suzanne
@FlipYrWhig:
That is really gross and is therefore awesome.
Chuck Butcher
@Calouste: I think you’re over strategizing this. The Roves don’t count unless she wins, she doesn’t need them to do it, in fact would probably hurt herself to do it. The real powers don’t care, they know they can own whoever gets it. They’d prefer a 2 termer, but they’ll stick GOP anyhow.
Rove et al think they’re important in Primaries, they’re not. Not in today’s GOP. If money looks at SP as a real possible GOP winner, they’ll shower money on her despite all the Roves in the world.
Chuck Butcher
@Jim Newell: Oh boy, over selling Boehner’s sanity isn’t a good bet. The Senate isn’t letting any GOP House craziness go and the veto exists. Assuming responsibility where none lies is risky. They’ve got to play to the rubes and make noise because they sure aren’t going to pass anything into law.
Yutsano
@Jim Newell:
We’ll see. The Tea Party did get some real choice doozies in with the new crop of kids. To say this will be a very interesting two years for both parties is understating things honestly. The Republicans will be expected to perform and the Democrats can’t look too obstructionist. Personally I gots my popcorn futures ready to go for this.
@Chuck Butcher: This. Also. Too.
FlipYrWhig
@Chuck Butcher: All of what you say could well be true, but he could easily patch together a third of the populace as a can-do billionaire who’s sick of partisan gridlock. The media always wants guys like that to run, but I think it would have more appeal in an Obama vs. Palin race, because you could catch the Dems disappointed in Obama from the left and the right of the party, and add to them the Republicans freaked out by two more years of the freak show, and be instantly competitive. I think Obama can beat any primary challenger, but if you could grab the votes that primary challenger would get and add to them a big chunk of Republicans–especially if money is no object–that’s instant viability. Of course, it would also mean that Sarah Palin would have an even better shot at winning, like happened with Rubio/Crist/Meek.
FlipYrWhig
@Chuck Butcher: The other guy I bet could make things interesting is Joe Manchin. Sort of reversing the poles on Bloomberg, poaching from the rank-and-file Democrats and the non-insane Republicans (but not the moneybags). And he doesn’t like Obama, from what I’ve heard.
Yutsano
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re ignoring the big obvious black mark against Bloomberg: He’s Jewish. He’s also short, although not quite Mitch Daniels short. But this country has amply demonstrated it’s nowhere near ready for a religious minority to be President.
Calouste
@Chuck Butcher:
Well, it’s not going to be widely-known information who she hires on her team. The blogs and the insiders will know it, but the general public won’t, and it wouldn’t influence them anyway even if they did (who’s going to vote for or against a candidate based on their strategy director or some role like that?).
It will however indicate to the GOP establishment (who will have information from inside the Palin campaign) whether she can be controlled or whether she has the same diva behavior like she displayed during the McCain campaign, which will give a fairly clear clue of how she will behave if she were to win. Whether Rove etc can sink her primary campaign is a different matter.
FlipYrWhig
@Yutsano: Those are good reasons he probably couldn’t get 50.01% of the country, but surely he could get 35%. And with the Palindrones and the Obots solidly behind their people and unlikely to stray, getting 35% could be enough. The thing that killed Crist was when Meek got better, preventing it from becoming the smart tactical move to vote for Crist to keep out Rubio. When three candidates stay viable, weird things happen.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Well sure. But this isn’t a tv show, and you aren’t writing the script.
I think it is much more likely that Palin turns out to be a placeholder, or a decoy. Suddenly sometime between October of next year and March of the following year, somebody else swoops in and charms the Republican party into a nomination, and whoever that is looks good by comparison to Palin. That person is the new version of George Bush. Who outside of Texas really knew this guy in early 2000?
Sarah Palin is just there to keep you focussed on things that don’t matter. I think that is by far the most likely outome.
Yutsano
@FlipYrWhig: Percentages don’t matter. 270 does. Bloomberg won’t go into this unless he’s guaranteed a solid Electoral College win. Outside of the Northeast, it’s rather difficult to see him putting together the math. Plus, speaking as a Westerner, we get a little suspicious of New York City folk nosing into our affairs without understanding our situations.
There would be a priceless potential moment though: watching Bloomberg navigate the various Iowa state and county fairs. Probably not a lot of kosher food outside of Des Moines.
Chuck Butcher
@Calouste: I get what you’re saying. But I think you’re including a non-issue which is controling her. She’s nobody as a pretty Mitt or Pawlenty, she either is Palin or she’s dead. That’s not going to change so what might be in question is if she can be co-opted into the plutcratic agenda. I don’t think it’s even a serious question, yes – while leaping for it. They’ve got their Mittens and Pawlenty and Thune or whatever and then they’ve got Sarah. Huck meant something for awhile but he’s too far out of notice now to push back against her. With what would he push back on with the same appeal?
Calouste
@Yutsano:
__
He doesn’t need to. No need for a third party to go through a primary process. And having someone in the race who doesn’t have to start with a multi-billion dollar give-away to the corn industry is not a bad thing.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano: It would take two news articles to sink Bloomy in OR and it would be easy. After I finished with him, seriously, he’d get 1-2 pts Ds and I’d bet no Rs. The NAs would almost all run away from him. My guess, less informed, is WA he’d be of no impact. CA is anybody’s guess. I can’t see much of anything anywhere in the west. He’s totally fucked in the South, the Confederates ain’t going there and hard pressed Obama’s ain’t ever. The NE might like him some, but who the hell is he outside NY? He ought to be easy meat in the Rust Belt and the Plains states would like him why?
Chuck Butcher
@Calouste: He can’t ignore the Primary season, it’s news and face time that can’t be made up in a short while. He doesn’t have to run against anybody but he sure needs to run. Not to mention getting on the General ballot has requirements in states, not all the same either.
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: In WA the reaction would be something along the lines of, “Who the hell are you?” and we’d all go Obama. I think in California it might get dicey depending on who the major players line up behind, but CA is now Democratic to the core. Bloomberg can’t win Idaho or Utah or Montana, and I can’t see either him or Palin doing well in Colorado. (Actually Utah would be fascinating to watch considering the Mormon attitude towards women leaders. There might be some cognitive dissonance that happens there or they just drop out entirely.) Go further east and you’re in sparsely populated but solidly Palin territory basically until you hit the Appalachians, then the Eastern Seaboard becomes a Bloomberg/Obama split if he’s lucky. I just don’t see the math adding up in any meaningful way and Bloomberg isn’t idiotic enough to put governing NYC on hold to go after a fool’s errand. He would only get in if he knew he could win.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano: He’s made noises, and he sure is egotistical enough to try. But I think he can do the math as well as any potential backers and that’s not a self-finance type of race. What wouldn’t surprise me is to see him dangle it out there for awhile. He seems to like the attention.
Chuck Butcher
There is this, which one of us in March 2008 would have even seriously mentioned Sarah?
Calouste
@Chuck Butcher:
Don’t think so. There is quite a large time gap between the time the primaries are practically decided and the conventions which allows for a third party candidate to get the attention. Declaring to run in April or so would both grab that gap and leave enough time to get on the ballots.
Anne Laurie
@FlipYrWhig:
__
Now you’re just trying to troll the Blog Proprietor, aren’t you.
Chuck Butcher
@Calouste: I suppose that’s true enough. I also don’t think there’s anyone with the math to do spit as a third party. There are some states where Bloomberg raise some havoc with Democrats, NY and FL are two I’d guess. Take a look at the Electoral Map and see what you think his chances actually are. Yutsano nailed it, Bloomberg isn’t an idiot, he’d go to win not make some point and that takes backers who can also count. He isn’t a Ross Perot and he has run for office before.
amk
Never ever misunderestimate the stupidity of amurikkkans that gave dubya – twice – and then promptly forgot about it two years later and voted back boehner, mcconnell & co along with rand fucking pauls.
Hope mittens/huckster tear the tundra trollop apart in the coming months so that she runs back to her outback.
BruinKid
Hmm… very interesting suggestion there.
But yeah, about Blow… Jon Stewart covered the media’s obsession with her on last Thursday’s show.
cmorenc
@Xopher: Your analogy about “I hope they nominate Ronald Reagan” back in 1980 is chillingly reminiscent.
Two huge impediments Carter had that Obama doesn’t have are:
1) anything like the Iranian hostage crisis, which would have made ANY US President unwilling to nuke Iran (and the hostages) out of existence look weak;
2) a prominent challenger in Democratic Presidential primaries like Ted Kennedy.
A huge impediment Obama DOES have that Carter didn’t is a media outlet like Fox that is a propaganda arm of the GOP, and a shallow, sloppy mainstream media that its owners see as merely another form of infotainment easily manipulated into framing issues according to partisan talking points (particularly GOP ones).
cmorenc
@Jim Newell: Unfortunately, this “let’s resegregate the schools” push by the GOP IS being played out in Raleigh, NC where a 5-4 school board majority is pushing exactly that in the guise of going to “neighborhood school assignment”. That’s an idea I could strongly support, don’t want my kid involuntarily assigned to be bussed to some distant school from my suburban neighborhood…EXCEPT that this isn’t what was happening, white, middle and upper-middle class folks WERE already overwhelmingly to the vanishing point being assigned to “neighborhood schools”, with the remainder pissed off because they lived not closely near any school but rather near a boundary between assignment districts and got assigned to school A when they preferred to be assigned to school B. RATHER, what’s really driving this GOP slim-majority “neighborhood schools” push is to “get the black low-income kids OUT of our neighborhood schools”, and back where they belong. Because that’s what was happening was that kids from low-income, often predominately black or Latino areas were being bused INTO predominately white suburban “neighborhood” schools in order to minimize any school being too heavily concentrated with low-income kids, and ambitious parents and kids from suburban neighborhoods were being enticed to volunteer for assignment to “magnet” schools in lower-income neighborhoods that had special, attractive programs for higher-achievers. A win-win. But according to the GOP school board majority, “neighborhood schools” means in practice “get the n**ggrs out of my kid’s school”, though they of course don’t put it that way nearly so bluntly or directly.
Mark S.
Since the open thread is hosed, via TPM, some mouth breather state rep from Texas is opposing the current Speaker because the Speaker is a Jew. Really. He said in an email, “We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it.”
But this guy really understands other religions. He told the reporter that Christians “are the only people in the history of the world that take in all forms, that believe everybody is made by God.”
I would love to hear Bill Kristol, Michael Medved, or some other Jewish conservative comment on this.
Jeffro
Hey, where’s all the media follow-up on all the election fraud that Republicans/FOX News were expecting prior to Nov 2nd?
Oh, wait…
Rhoda
We’re missing the point that when Blow talks about “the Left” he’s implicitly talking about the MSM too; because all of the serious people have internalized that the MSM is liberal.
Just like Morning Joe is run by a “moderate” Republican on the “liberal” MSNBC.
This is the fucked up world they’re in.
lacp
What’s with all the heavy breathing over Pres. Palin? Apparently BJers don’t believe in Mencken’s theory of democracy – you know, “the people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard.”
matoko_chan
YES! DougJ is correct.
The TP/GOP is trying to suppress palinism like it suppressed birtherism last year.
Because she cannot win the general–they know this, Blow to Rove.
And telling the base that will just make make them more determined to nominate her, just like it did with COD.
I dont think subtlety works on the GOP base anymore, and i dont think the MSM will stop talking about her because she sells.
What is the next step, DougJ, in your opinion?
Do they offer her the VP slot on a Romney ticket or let her go third party?
Because she is running.
The more the TP/GOP elites try to kneecap her the more determined she becomes to give all the elites that big middle finger she and Bristol talked about.
remember
kommrade reproductive vigor
This gay Black Panther socialist Muslim would also be horrified if Palin won the GOP nomination.
In fact, if she won I would immediately pack my 18 male concubines (who are all white and were Baptists until I got my hands on them) into a van and move to Canada.
Isaac
@Mark S.: “They’re some of my best friends,” he said of Jews, naming two friends of his. “I’m not bigoted at all; I’m not racist.”
mai naem
I wish people would stop treating Romney like he has a chance. He’s a mormon. There is no way a Mormon will win a national Republican primary. Maybe in Utah/Arizona/Nevada/Colorado/NM but it ain’t happening nationally. And Bloomy has a zero chance too. Furthermore. Bloomy would only run if he wants to be hated in the country because whoever loses will blame Bloomy and kill Bloomy forever in NY politics. I think Repubs will nominate one of the governors – Christie/Daniels/Heileman. I don’t see the Repubs nominating brown skinned Jindal. Maybe Haley Barbour.
jwb
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: “Sarah Palin is just there to keep you focused on things that don’t matter. I think that is by far the most likely outcome.”
The only reason Palin has been allowed to continue is that she keeps someone else from claiming the leadership of the teabaggers. The teabaggers are actually a threat to the corporatism of the GOP, and without someone like Palin who is easily controlled in place the teabaggers themselves could turn on their corporate masters. (And Palin is in fact easily controlled: she’s a grifter who cares about little else than money and fame, two things that the corporate masters can reliably deliver to her.)
DougJ
@Jim Newell:
I don’t think Parker or Bobo will. How can they, after they called her a cancer?
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ:
I’ll take lack of integrity and a remarkable ability to get with the program for $400, Alex.
Svensker
@WarMunchkin:
No one liked Ferraro, not even her base. All the charm of badly cured cement.
Ron
@scarshapedstar: I think this could have been summed up by “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”
sparky
@Chuck Butcher:
FWIW, i agree. whoever runs her operation seems pretty savvy,* and since she seems to want money and attention, it seems reasonable to assume that she would manage a more reasonable-sounding position for a national election. she certainly hasn’t been averse to taking money to tell people what they want to hear. i think the only reason she would not run is that she would not want the scrutiny as to finances or her private life. so yes, it is playing with fire to want her to win, because if she does, since the Rs want the power, they’ll all fall in line.**
in other words, stop wasting your time making fun of Blow and, as CB said, think about how far Palin has gotten on essentially nothing. i think that she would prefer to be a professional candidate as Jesse Jackson & Donald Trump were for a while because it’s free publicity and free funding, but FSM help the US if she decides to be a serious candidate.
*given this it seems unlikely that there will be a denouement ala A Face in the Crowd.
**many commenters on this blog have spilled endless pixels on the topic of how the Rs are willing to blow up the economy to get power. if you think that, why would you think they’d have a problem with Palin if they thought she’d get them into the White House?
sparky
@Svensker: exactly, and with that super spouse, too.
hey, maybe Palin will pull a Piro and become a teevee “judge”!
i can dream, can’t i?
matoko_chan
@jwb: no they are srsly trying to kneecap her. Rove started before the midterms even. Blow and scarborough and douthat have all piled on.
it is just like birtherism.
they suppressed that, didnt they?
Neil B
Sarah Palin’s basic character is best shown by her odious “Thanksgiving” message on Facebook. She starts with a pastiche of Obama gaffes (real AFAICT) to ostensibly defend from the media/lib bloggers etc. making big of her NK gaffe (see transcript at glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/48554/.) Well, no they didn’t as best I can tell; other than leftie snark fests. So what, they aren’t important. “The media” did not.
Then she claims referring to SK as ally “throughout,” and then corrected herself after the NK gaffe. No, according to transcript (see link and excerpt below) she spoke only of NK, which led
up to her slip (easily just a repetition flub.) But then a host corrected her. So she also lied about how it went. She turned a non-issue into a stunning display of her vileness and dishonesty. Palin is a petty, sarcastic, reflexive liar (as Sullivan notes) and has no place near the Oval Office.
And so tacky to rag on Obama instead of just complaining how dumb to pick on her. Then the supreme tastelessness of making that a *Thanksgiving Day* message of all things!
Then see the grotesque comment section at her FB page, typically people reveling in how she sticks it to libs, fights for Christian and patriotic values (despite her being so manifestly unstatesmanlike and unchristian.) This is a person who could, in today’s de/based America, get elected in two years.
PS: I said some things like this at her FB post and linked from Sullivan. Now I can’t post or like comments there. They censor her critics
all the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Neil B:
Sarah Palin is a pathological liar. She can be documented saying “water is wet”, and a day later, she’ll deny saying it, and insist “water is dry”. She did this on the “troopergate” report, in which it stated clearly in the very first finding that she violated a statute, and she claimed that the report cleared her of all charges.
She has no problem at all with stating repeatedly something that is totally in contradiction to facts that are indisputable.
Anya
@Jim Newell:
Jim, you’re discounting her vindictiveness, not to mention her charming petty snarling ways. In the GOP primary, all the establishment big wigs will go against her. In all likelihood, they will say something critical or unflattering about her. Her pettiness will keep score and attack them with her trade mark viciousness. Her past behavior gives us amble examples that she does not let the smallest snark or attack unanswered. She will burn all of her bridges and then some. Also, too, because she vanquished all of them establishment evil, on her own terms relaying only on her awesomeness and of course baby Jesus, she will not seek their advice, she will shut them out of the process. She is a volatile dimwitted loose cannon, with a god complex, not a winning combination.
Scott de B.
That’s because Nixon got elected by running on a platform of “look at the pointy-headed liberal elite trying to ridicule me. They think the same about you.”
scarshapedstar
sloan
Damn straight! Republicans don’t believe in conservatism so much as they believe in anti-liberalism and anything that pisses off a liberal in the process is just icing on the cake.
They wrongly believe that supporting Palin pisses off liberals, so they support her. Liberals rightly believe that she’s a weak candidate, so they taunt Republicans, which only makes them more determined to get her elected.
As to the “Palin obsession” that we keep hearing about, it’s on the right, not the left. If they didn’t support her she’d be no more relevant than Ann Coulter. It is the Republicans who vow to fight like hell for her that keep her propped up. They are obsessed with her in a way I’ve never seen and they have been since the day McCain put her in front of a camera.
Here’s Michael Reagan gushing the morning after her convention speech:
It goes on and on and it has been that way ever since. The fact that she trails the President in every poll does not register with her fans. The fact that she walked off the job and hasn’t completed a term of elected office since being Mayor of Wasilla doesn’t matter to them. They are hopelessly devoted to her in an emotional way that goes well beyond politics.
But it’s the liberals who are bored with her and change the channel when she comes on TV who are supposedly obsessed with her.
glasnost
As a random philosophical aside, doesn’t Sarah Palin serve as a walking demonstration of the limitations of pure aggression as strategy for political influence?
And since some people would respond, “no she demonstrates the limits of dumb aggression”.. well, we have examples of smart pure aggression, as well. Alan Grayson and Glenn Greenwald come to mind.
Changing topics randomly, Isn’t it great that Sarah Palin isn’t all that popular? Have we all stopped to revel in that for a while? Really appreciate it, roll around in it and rub it all over our skin? When was the last time the american public actually avoided acting as dumb as humanly possible? I mean, we liked Tom Green and the WWF. We elected George Bush III and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why not give Sarah Palin a 60% approval rating, America? I don’t know why America started having minimal standards for competence, but it’s been awesome.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I wouldn’t pay any attention to what Palin says in regard to predicting what her Presidency would be like. Recall that W Bush ran as a sane conservative but governed as a neocon because, well, he surrounded himself with neocons and lacked the intellectual and moral strength to stand up to them in the early years. Recall that Obama ran as Mr. Change, then composed his economic team with the worst insider hacks imaginable, with the predictable consequence that economic policy two years on is still a disaster. Pay attention to who Palin surrounds herself with, not the serial idiocies driveling out of the social networking sites. After all, she couldn’t even govern Alaska for a full term because it was just too damned hard, I would expect all decisions more difficult than the daily wardrobe to be outsourced in her administration.
Tim
@Ailuridae:
No, I voted for Al Gore, in Fort Lauderdale of all places. Then I sat and watched Gore play pretend football with his family and do everything wrong, while the Dems in South Florida let the pukes shove them around during the recount, right up until the day Gore conceded to Shrub and election he did not win.
THAT is classic Democratic politics. Turn winning into losing.
Anne Laurie
@glasnost:
I’d be happier about this if it weren’t that a considerable chunk of Palin’s natural base is just stubborn about her “girl cooties”. They don’t mind that she’s a vindictive semi-literate grifter, they just object to her lack of a y-chromosome. Because a penis represents God’s Sceptre of Leadership, didn’t they tell you that in Bible studies, you atheist? !
Triassic Sands
Palin might well be a weak general election candidate. However, in 2010, Republicans were, by many measures, even less popular than Democrats, but still managed to do quite well on Nov. 2.
To discount Sarah Palin is to give the American people credit they don’t deserve. The simple question is Are the American people stupid enough to elect Sarah Palin? I think the answer to that has to be “yes.” Will they? That depends on a lot of things we don’t know now.
In 2012, I’m going to hope that the Republicans nominate the candidate least likely to destroy the country (if such a candidate exists), since there will be at least a fair chance that person will be our next president. I believe the American people could elect Palin — so I don’t want her to be the candidate.
d.s.
I wouldn’t be scoffing at Sarah Palin when the unemployment rate just bounced up to 9.8%.
She can win. Wackier candidates won in moderate districts in the November teafest.
In 1980 the Carter White House was overjoyed that Reagan won the Republican nomination.
Think about it. He was some dude best known for hugging a chimp in a movie, campaigning against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and claiming that Medicare would lead to a totalitarian government.
They thought they couldn’t lose.
brantl
@Tim: That was stolen by the Supreme Court, not lost by Al. And Ohio was done by Blackwell, against Kerry.