“Hmm. Once again, you and many others here want to avoid the real question: why aren’t they jazzed about her? Why do they seem to prefer, on average, other candidates? “
I don’t think I’m going to be able to give you an answer that will satisfy you. You’ve presented a couple of ideas:
“My take is that she’s too close to their mother’s age. “
“...one of the things that attracts them to Huckabee is that they think he is more conservative as a Christian”
Maybe it’s the non-stop negative media coverage of Palin. Maybe it’s the fact that she doesn’t try to be everything to everyone. Maybe it’s because they are college kids that lack the experience to know better.
Those would be my guesses. Is there anything that you think can be done about those guesses that will jazz up college kids?
I think she'll probably have to at some point dump the celebrity approach, which has worked well to an extent, but has also made her seem less than serious as a world leader.
I absolutely agree the media has been horrible, and there is no doubt that ANY conservative is going to get the same treatment.
There's still plenty of time: 22 months. And Obama can revert to his fumbling, arrogant self---but even then, if you look at RealClearPolitics going back to last March, with the exception of one PPP poll about every quarter (out of several PPP polls), Obama is just crushing her: mid- to high double digits. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_palin_vs_obama-1169.html#polls and click link at the bottom for older polls).
The really bad thing about that is that she didn't gain much ground when he had collapsing poll numbers everywhere. She kinda got close just as they polled right before the November election.