Because frankly, the idea of that woman running the country scares the hell out of me. I know she’s being all non-committal about it right now but lets face it, she’s got something up her sleeve. Someone who can’t even admit that they’re wrong about a simple fact (the Paul Revere and the British thing for example) makes me very nervous. Everyone makes mistakes, but the least she can do is admit the flub and not try to cover it up. And while we’re on the subject, why does she draw people to her in the first place? I just don’t understand it. Someone please enlighten me because every time I see her I cringe. I’d like to know if my worries are real.
The correct question is, if the economy doesn’t get better, which Republican are we going to be stuck with.
Ultimately, the 2012 election will be a referendum on the economy, particulary unemployment.
If it’s over 9%, the Republicans could run the Cheney/C’Thulhu ticket and win.
It it’s below 6%, Obama is probably going to have an easy time of it.
More than likely, it’s going to be somewhere in between. The higher it is, the harder time the President is going to have.
Democrats do have an answer, and it’s “How can we influence how this turns out” Since there is no race for the Democratic Nomination, Democrats are free to vote in Republican or Open primaries, and can vote for someone who might be more sensible.
The thing is the Hard Right is also feeling its oats right now. A point where they could call Newt Gingrich a “RINO” because he once admitted the science indicates that AGW is probably real was passed a long time ago.
Now, personally, I don’t think Palin is serious about running this time. I think she is trying to refurbrish her brand name, but she hasn’t done the things serious candidates do, like organize local supporters in the early states.
For your other question, why does she attract people. I think a lot of people like her because she seems like one of them. Very middle class background, just a regular person who hunts, worries about her kids, goes to church, etc. We like to think our politicians are “Just like Us”, but by definition, they can’t be.
More likely than many here realize. Here in Central Derpistan the hate for the Kenyan Usurper is strong and the love for St. Sarah of Wasilla is strong. She’s a strong conservative Christian woman with mainstream American values and common sense solutions to problems caused by Socialism. If she says Paul Revere fired warning shots and rang bells… well, that’s what happened.
You betcha!
Palin’s negative rating in polls is quite high amongst Republicans, and even amongst self-identified Tea Partiers. Her following is going to Bachmann, who, while equally batshit insane, at least can speak coherently and has knowledge of the issues.
She could get nominated, but I don’t think there is a chance in hell of her getting elected. She does not represent Middle America as much as she represents Batshit America, and as soon as she gets asked about the Ryan budget and privatizing Medicare, she loses the over-50 crowd.
She has as much chance of winning the GOP nomination as Gingrich has, which is Zero. I look for Bachmann to announce in the next several weeks, which would pretty much put Palin out of it.
She got lucky when McCain was desperate during his campaign and did something drastic. She should thank her lucky fucking stars that she’s now a rich brainless used up media whore on tv now and just step the fuck aside. Imma gon get me some saltines. Hooyah!
Well, what are Bachmann’s chances? I realize that she’s batshit crazy, but she seems to be batshit crazy in the ultra conservative fundamental religionist way that appeals to the same base that has catapaulted Palin to fame. On top of that, she has fund-raising abilities and a law degree that grants her an intellectual credibility that Palin sorely lacks. Given the paucity of really strong candidates this year, I could see her name coming up if her handlers can rein in her tendency to make awe inspiring gaffes.
If I remember correctly, the last odds on her winning were 1000 to 1. Maybe if she stayed on her meds?
I still can’t imagine she’ll win, but I think she’ll do pretty well, if for no other reason then if a voter wants to go for a formally moderate ex-governor, they’ll have three candidates to choose from. If they want a more consistently conservative candidate who isn’t totally fringe (like Paul or Cain), Bachmans pretty much the only choice.
IIRC, the GOP primary will have fewer “winner take all” races then in '08, which might draw things out more then in past years, and keep Romney or Pawlenty from knocking one or the other out early, and thus let them keep dividing the more moderate vote, which would also work to her advantage.
So I’d certainly give her better then 1:1000 odds, maybe something like 1:30 or so.
I think if the economy stays tanked or gets worse, Palin still wouldn’t win against Obama. Someone like Romney or Pawlenty might, but those media gotcha questions like, “How are you today?”, will end up with Palin exploding or imploding or both.
Seriously, the only way she wins is if she doesn’t open her mouth AT ALL. And I don’t thinks she’s smart enough to do even that.
On edit, I think it’s nearly 50/50 that she could win the nomination if she runs, which is the best possible outcome for Obama.
sorry, Jim, I think Palin actually comes out ahead in those fights with the media.
Let’s look at the e-mail thing. The Press went over 24,000 e-mails trying to make her look like a jerk, and she actually came off looking smarter and more sympathetic.
Now, if we were Europeans, where they actually take education seriously, yeah, she’d be a non-starter. Unfortunately, we are Americans, where 45% don’t believe in evolution because it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
Thank you. It is indeed appropriate for you to apologize to me for having such an opinion. 
If I wasn’t clear enough in my post, my point is that Sarah will have some form of melt down hissy fit during the course of the campaign, and will be seen (more clearly than now, if that’s possible) to not be emotionally stable enough for the job.
To clarify, there were 8,000 emails that nobody has been allowed to see (redacted by former Palin employees), and which probably contain the bloody meat.
The problem is that Palin’s been polling quite well lately, and Bachmann’s yet to break out of the mid single digits.
Here are the national polls of Republicans I could find so far this month. Other than the CNN poll, they’re all from pollingreport.com:
CNN, June 3-7: Romney 24%, Palin 20%,…, Bachmann 4%.
USA Today/Gallup, June 8-11: Romney 24%, Palin 16%,…, Bachmann 5%.
Fox News, June 5-7: Romney 23%, Giuliani 13%, Palin 12%,…, Bachmann 4%.
Reuters/Ipsos, June 3-6: Palin 22%, Romney 20%,…, Bachmann 6%.
Quinnipiac, May 31-June 6: Romney 25%, Palin 15%,…, Bachmann 6%.
ABC News/WaPo, June 2-5: Romney 21%, Palin 17%,…, Bachmann 3%.
I just don’t see how Bachmann can do much damage to Palin’s standing in the race anytime soon, by announcing or by any other means. But as long as Palin is (or appears to be) running, she sucks up most of Bachmann’s oxygen.
Palin’s biggest fan turns against her. John Ziegler says she can’t beat Obama:
Be warned however, that article is pretty self serving.
I keep hearing this argument and I think it’s oversimplistic at best and more probably dead wrong.
The unemployment rate is over 9% right now. If the election were held today, Obama would be re-elected.
The objection to this is that the Republicans haven’t yet chosen a candidate or started the campaign. True, of course. The money will flow to the nominee and the ads will pound Obama daily.
And yet… Obama has been pounded daily for over two years. And the Democrats, now in disarray and fumbling around, will get to concentrate their message in a billion dollars worth of campaign support. That campaign will actually improve once a Republican nominee is chosen. No candidate is well-liked or has broad support even within the party and each one has huge negatives already that are certain to be exploited.
In addition, the demographics are highly favorable to the Democrats. More than half of Obama supporters sat out the 2010 election. There is no chance this will happen in 2012.
This demographic advantage is largely dissipated because of the Electoral College, with the Democrats likely to have huge majorities in a few states but have very close races in swing states. That makes the race closer than the raw totals would indicate.
The economy will be a huge factor in the election. But Americans hate to turn out a sitting president without a strong rationale. That the economy is still what it is today is not that rationale. Almost every economist is predicting some upturn by November 2012 as well.
There is essentially no chance that maintaining the current unemployment numbers will lose the presidency for a generally popular president waging a campaign against an opponent starting out with no broad support. It really doesn’t matter who that candidate is. Palin has less than essentially no chance because her negatives are gigantic and her base keeps shrinking. But the same argument can be made for Romney.
Campaigns are filled with unexpected events and a large unexpected event can change everything overnight. (see Weiner, Anthony) At this moment, however, there is no reasonable way to predict a Republican win extrapolated off the current situation. This isn’t a prediction about the future, though, because I don’t know any of the variables. It’s just saying that your extrapolation makes no sense to me.
I say, let’s wait until some of the Derp starts to hit the national campaign and actually be scrutinized.
Let’s kill Medicare! There goes the elderly vote. The same people you rallied last year on the false claim that Obama was trying to merely damage Medicare.
Let’s kill any Government service that can be privatized Sure, just wait until the cost estimates start rolling in and people start to really understand what they have to lose.
Let’s cut taxes! Hey! Let’s inflate the deficit even more!
Let’s cut entitlements! Oh wait, you mean grandma’s social security?
Let’s cut onerous government regulations and oversight! You mean like Energy and Food safety programs? Meaning more bad drugs, more tainted food and more oil, coal and nuclear accidents?
All this shit sounds great to the uneducated when they can assume that it won’t affect them other than by maybe lowering their taxes, or it hits their buzzword bingo card (courtesy of Fox News). The reality is much harsher.
It’s hard to say with certainty that Palin is hurt by making a fool of herself time and time again, but the opinion polls of her show pretty clearly that she’s destroyed any chance of being a serious candidate.
Take this June 7 ABC/Washington Post Poll: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-loses-bin-laden-bounce-romney-on-the-move-among-gop-contenders/2011/06/06/AGT5wiKH_story.html?hpid=z1
Almost 2/3rds of all Americans say they definitely would not vote for Pailin and and 42% of Republicans said they definitely would not. More than 60% of those polled said they consider her unqualified to be president.
If someone wants to imagine some other reason that more than 60% of Americans consider her unqualified thats fine, but it seems clear to me that it’s because of the things she has said and done.
In a head-to-head matchup with Obama Palin trailed by 17 points, worse than any other hypothetical GOP candidate in the poll.
She’s certainly got plenty of negatives, but the “it’s utterly impossible” line is nuts.
The flip, side of her negatives is that her base is sizable and fervent, strong enough that she’d be instantly be a top-3 candidate and stay there. If someone else implodes (you just know a Mitt Romney Sex Tape is out there somewhere), and it’s too late for anyone else to get in, she could win the nomination. Not saying it’s likely, but stranger things have happened.
And should she win the nomination, the strategy is a simple one. McCain/Palin lost to Obama by 10 million votes in 2008; assume that that margin is cut in half because of the economy, etc. to more typical margin of about 5 million. If First Major Party Presidential Nominee Palin can attract one-tenth of the eligible-but-didn’t-vote-in-08 women to support her on the basis of gender it’s a dead heat.
Again, not saying it’s* likely*; but it’s not hard to construct a plausible scenario.