Do you not see how arrogant that makes you sound? Look, politicians can come back from a defeat and win. Nixon did, Reagan did, Gore did (though not in 2000 or after; I’m talking about running in '88 and being Clinton’s running mate in '92 and '96.). Don’t write her off before this election is even over.
SOMEbody in her party is hailing her as the second Coming of Christ or Reagan or some deity. I’m not just making up her popularity among a large fraction of Repubicans, am I?
Whatever size that fraction is of voters who are swooning for Palin right now (and I’m guessing 30, 40, maybe 50% of all voters who will vote for McCain/Palin this year), it’s got to be comparable to those Pubbies who were early Reagannauts. And what I’m asking is: What, as a liberal, am I risking by encouraging Pubbies to go as far in her direction as they like? A disaster for the Repubican party as we know it, years of wandering around in the desert of hopelessly lost elections? Or a President Palin emerging as the end result? I’ve laughed too soon once before, with Reagan, and I don’t look forward to the same phenomenon again.
Surely it would be a good thing if she was more like Reagan? Particularly in the area of ineligibility for the position of Vice President?
No, but remember that earlier in 2008 there were Republicans who viewed Fred Thompson as the coming savior.
The fringe Republicans always seem to have a “look, this guy’s coming to save us!” mentality. Then it switches to the next person, and the next, and the next. Palin peaked too soon with those people. By 2012, there will have been another dozen saviors trumpeted by the Freepers of the world.
At least, that’s my read on the topic.
I wonder if they’ll be suffering from Messiah overload when Jesus finally shows up.
The thing with Reagan was he had wide appeal, across conservative ranks and resonating with some Dems, and I don't see that with her. No, you're not making up her popularity, but IMO you're over rating it. Even if McC wins this election, there are already acknowledged cracks in the GOP, and any serious minded souls are going to work on a fix, a re-grouping, time in the wilderness, whatever.
I've heard it said that Reagan, though not knowing details of particular things, surrounded himself with people who did, and let them run with it. It appears that Palin's office holding has been staffed with cronies from high school and yes men in fear of losing their jobs, so there's no equivalence there.I’d settle for the social conservatives telling the fiscal conservatives where to get off, & retooling the GOP into an authoritarian, Christian, welfare state party.
That wish seems unlikely in the near term because the social conservatives are fiscal conservatives. Maybe your hope is also doomed, if the fiscal conservatives are social conservatives. It makes a sick kind of sense if they in fact aren’t driven by Christianity but by opposition to any change from the familiar social (dis)order.
See, this is the scary part to me–I think an authoritarian Christian Party could get itself elected in this country.
“welfare state”??
Not bloody well likely. The conventional wisdom has been that the Reagan Revolution was made possible by outfits like the Moral Majority convincing nominally Democratic working-class religious conservatives that they really should vote Republican. Hell, this is why McCain picked Palin to “balance the ticket”; the only reason.
(Personally, I think Reagan’s victory was more a combination of a shitty economy, the Ayatolla Khomeni, and Jimmy Carter’s apparent inability to see the forest for the trees. And the presence of John Anderson in the race made the electoral college count look like a landslide. But old myths die hard.)
I was not just writing off Palin herself, I was writing off her political tendency (and she is now too famous ever to re-invent herself in that regard). The ideological conservative movement is not going away, it is too well-established with its grassroots organizations and its astroturf organizations and its think-tanks and its wholly owned media outlets and the usually reliable backing of the business class. But from now on it will be on a very slow (generational-time-scale slow) and steady electoral decline. And I also predict the various factions within it – paleocons, neocons, theocons, bizcons, libertarians – will find it increasingly harder to work together.
Hard, but not unheard of. I would remind you of the 1976, 1980, and 1992 elections. And some analysts suggest Johnson would have lost in 1968 if he’d run.