Palin and 2012

Marc Ambinder has a thought-provoking post up about his initial thoughts regarding Sarah Palin and the 2012 fight for the Republican nomination.

Here's a thought: the wave of establishment Republican-types endorsing obama is going to lead to a massive, massive anti-elite backlash in the 2012 GOP primary. think about the Democrats' anti-establishment feelings in 2003 -- Howard Dean, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,, and then gin up the outrage by factor of ten.

Whether the nominee ends up being palin or huckabee or someone else, that nominee is going to have to cater to these feelings of anger and betrayal in order to get the nod.

And here, both Palin and Huckabee have a built in advantage. The GOP base, by and large, will not blame Palin for McCain's failure to win the election -- if, of course, he fails to win the election. The base seems to love her.

The question is whether her political recalibration will be enough by 2012 to sustain a political majority outside the Republican Party. Mike Huckabee doesn't need to rethink himself all that much -- a few positions here, a few positions there, some emphasis in different corners -- and he might well present himself as the most electable conservative candidate.

again, i come down on the side of palin here. i'm guessing that the GOP primary is going to be all about telling the base that it's not their fault, and palin is going to be second to none on that score.

I could write and speculate on this issue for hours on end -- and I intend to once the election and is over and done with and the smoke clears -- but right now I will just try to put down some initial thoughts on the matter.

Ambinder makes some great points here. As we have written and discussed, I agree that in the wake of a loss, the GOP will move further to the right. This will happen mostly because there is nowhere else to go, with most of the party's moderates either defeated or excommunicated. As the GOP has moved more and more to the right over recent years, a McCain loss would be almost a culmination for its existing direction, and an affirmation for the party's current leadership that rightward is the only direction to victory.

The party's leaders will assail McCain and blame his loss in great part on him not being conservative enough. Many of them will continue to talk-up Palin, and argue that she was the only reason McCain was even competitive for much of the general campaign (assuming McCain is decisively beaten). In other words, Palin is likely to come out of this process more than politically intact with several key segments of the the GOP which will have a big say in who is chosen to oppose President Obama in 2012. With all of this in mind, it makes strong sense that Palin would be a frontrunner for the nomination, if not the frontrunner.

Still, questions abound whether she can emerge with the nomination in four years. I admit that a few weeks after Palinapoloza was in full swing, I pronounced her a conservative "star" and a top contender for the 2012 nomination. I still believe all of this, but there is little doubt that a big part of the bloom is off the Palin rose, even with conservative voters and the GOP base.

Palin has largely been an embarrassment on the campaign trial. This is not just this layman critic's opinion, but fact. It has been one poor performance after the other for Palin, and while I can't or won't say she is killing McCain, she clearly is not helping him anymore. The proof is in the pudding, and this even includes Republicans.

Among Republicans: 65/8 (65/10) +55 to +57
Among Republicans: 51/14 (59/4) +55 to +37

These are favorable/unfavorable splits we highlighted yesterday from the recent NY Times/CBS poll. The first set of numbers is for McCain, and the second, Palin. Whereas McCain experienced a slight rise in base support between September and today, Palin dropped nearly 20 points. Again, this is among the Republican base. We see then that getting big crowds at a political rally in northern Florida or in Colorado Springs is one thing, as these people are the hardest of the hardcore supporters, and doing the same with the overall population is quite another. And while this poll might just be small sample at one time in the scheme of things, it is a bad trend for Palin. Her numbers are now poor -- even among her base.

What I am trying to suggest, therefore, is that Sarah Palin has taken a big fall with voters across the board in the short time since she became a national figure. She has gone from a darling to a flawed political figure, and one who is incredibly polarizing for someone so new to the national stage. All of this will complicate her drive for the nomination in 2012.

And I have no doubt at all that Palin will make that drive. That she took the veep nomination in the first place, and based on her manners and posture on the trail, demonstrate the kind of person she is. Palin is ferociously ambitious, and completely sure of herself, even in the face of clear evidence of her political and personal inadequacies. She is going to run for President in four years. I feel confident in saying that, and quite honestly, I do not think it is a bold statement at all.

In terms of Palin being a favorite because of an anti-elitism push by base Republicans against Obama, that remains to seen. How the Republicans are able to run against Obama in 2012 will depend entirely on how he governs, the policies he pushes and institutes, and in what direction the national economy moves in going forward. As Ambinder presents, I do agree that if the GOP were to take an anti-elitism, anti-intellectual campaign to Obama, there would be few better to channel into Republicans' anger and emotions in these areas than Sarah Palin. It's all a question of what the landscape looks like.

My initial sense today is that I think that by 2011 and 2012, Palin will be too marginalized even within her own party to put together a break-out campaign to win the nomination. She will have a strong core of supporters around her cheerleading her candidacy all the way, yes, but I don't know if we can say that that will be enough. I really think it will be a case of the GOP's heart going against its head.

Palin may appeal more to their baser instincts and emotions, but a bloodless technocrat like Mitt Romney or a dynamic wonk like Bobby Jindal might have more appealing intellectual capacities, while possessing all of Palin's rightwing viewpoints. Given that I have been contended that the GOP will be moving further and further to the right after November 4, it may be likely that the party goes blindly with Palin. Still, if they want a winning model, they should remember that how George Bush got elected in 2000.

Finally, in terms of Palin's own movement after this election, we should expect her to continue to her stay on the national stage. She will travel across the country, raising money for conservatives, speaking at specific engagements filled with base power-brokers, and she will try hard to be seen with the same GOP intellectuals who, as this New Yorker piece details, helped craft a place for her on the national stage which made her veep selection possible this summer. More important than anything over the next four years, Palin has to bolster appreciably her intellectual bona fides, particularly in foreign policy matters, but really in everything she is deficient in -- which means everything. She doesn't need to become an expert in anything, but just appear to be versed in subject matters outside of dressing a moose and launching scathing political attacks on opponents.

Whether it will be enough, only time will tell. Still, Palin will have a re-election in 2010, and if Troopergate is any indication, she might find that things are not the same in Alaska for her as when she left. We'll come back to this subject a lot after November.