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Interesting post from (C4P....”Technopeasant”)

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I posted on this topic earlier but let me elaborate. Two keys events happened in early May 2011 which might have changed the course of American history.

On May 1, 2011, five weeks ago, the news came down late on Sunday evening that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Once it was officially confirmed a few days later, President Obama’s overall job approval number soared and as well as his foreign affairs rating. His people knew that Obama’s job approval on his handling of the economy, the budget deficit, fiscal and monetary policy would not immediately follow suit but I think anticipated his domestic poll numbers would show signs of moving out of the doldrums by the end of May, feeling that the American people would be caught up in the euphoria of the BL killing to at least suspend their anger or antagonism towards Obama on what the media refers to as “pocketbook issues”. In turn this would give another “rocket” boost to his overall approval number and in turn his re-elect number and take Obama into the mid 50’s range in approval and in the high 40’s in his re-elect number from which he could then leverage over the course of the next 17 months to gain another 2-3 % in his re-elect number to sail to re-election.

About two weeks later, on May 14, 2011, Mike Huckabee, who had told the world about 3 and 1/2 months before he would NOT be announcing his presidential plans until the “latter part” of summer, apparently had a change of heart or mind and decided to move up his timetable and tell the world his plans. Prior to his announcement, most polls had shown Huck to be first or second in national polls and first or second in most state polls with most pundits predicting if Huckabee did run that he would be a serious player in the 2012 GOP presidential race. Catching some political watchers off-guard (not myself or most people at C4P due to firelight’s inside information) despite the highly favorable poll numbers, Mike Huckabee bowed out of the 2012 race throwing the race into temporary chaos and the status of each candidate into complete discombobulation or into a state of acute uncertainty.

I need not bore you again with the difference in poll numbers released by PPP on May 10th with Huckabee in the race vs the June 2 national poll with Huck no longer in the mix except to say that there was merit in the extensive political anxiety or uneasiness brought about by Huckabee’s departure as many candidates saw their poll numbers either increase exponentially or decrease dramatically over a period of just 3 weeks.

Now let’s merge these two events together and here is what I think happened. Sometime around the week of May 15-21, I believe the Obama war room (OWR) and even maybe with Obama himself present huddled together to brainstorm certain possibilities regarding the significance of both events and one of those scenarios they looked at but hoped would not unfold was Obama’s poll numbers stagnating after his initial boost in fortune from the BL killing and not getting the secondary boost from voters feeling more kindly towards him on the economy and at the same time Sarah Palin getting a major boost in GOP primary support due to Huckabee leaving the race.

One thing you have to remember PPP was not the first poll post-Huckabee to show Palin surging and being virtually within thhe margin of error tied with Romney or at least securely entrenched in second place in the horse race. So the Obama war room most likely had a general idea of what was happening in the GOP presidential race (Romney losing conservative support and Palin gaining among conservatives especially among those self-identifying as VERY CONSERVATIVE). And once the OWR realized the above, that Obama’s approval number had plateaued in the high 40’s with his re-elect number still being no better than 45% and Palin finally beginning to hit her stride despite not having thrown her hat into the ring yet, I believe they decided to perhaps contemplate changing their political strategy fundamentally towards dealing with Sarah Palin.

For the last 2+ years or even going back to the 2008 election, the Obama WH has run two parallel political strategies in their attempt to take down Sarah Palin: from the WH to virtually ignore her despite her ongoing attacks on Obama and his radical agenda (Sarah Palin in an interview with Greta Van Susteren even hinted at that when she suggested that “President Obama doesn’t know me from Adam”) and for the MSM to continually deny her the opportunity to further legitimize her political credentials and worthiness through a steady stream of smears, ridicule and vituperation. The WH even went so far as to not attack Palin in the lead-up to the 2010 midterms knowing full well she was mobilizing TP supporters, helping to get TP type candidates to win their primaries and to finally helping to maximize conservative turnout that would prove disastrous to the Democrats in both the House and the Senate as well in state houses and governor races nationwide. And because of that, the MSM was largely ineffective in their attempts to diminish Palin in the eyes of conservatives and Republicans. In other words was the WH so obsessed with not giving Palin any window of opportunity to further enhance her political status to protect Obama’s re-election bid that they were willing to throw many Democrats under the bus? I can’t prove it but the thought has definitely crossed my mind.

Now to present day. I think about two weeks ago the decision was made by the Obama WH in collusion with the “state-run media” (MSM) to put out a trial balloon to signal a change in strategy regarding Sarah Palin. And that change in strategy imho involved acknowledging that Sarah Palin could win the GOP nomination and/or beat Obama in 2012 thus further legitimizing Palin, but at the same time paving the way for a new strategy of demonization, running over the next 17 months against the newly legitimized Sarah Palin resulting in a campaign of fear, terror, disinformation and propaganda full of daily demagoguery of Palin foisted on the American people to warn the nation of the dire consequences of Sarah Palin winning the 2012 election and that if you didn’t want armaggedon to occur that they dare not risk changing horses in midstream (the 1864 Abraham Lincoln strategy) but instead embrace “the devil they did know” instead of the devil they didn’t know.

And on the broadcast last week by Andrew Sullivan proclaiming on the Chris Matthews show that Palin could beat Obama in 2012, soon to be echoed by fellow panelist Leftist Joe Klein who invoked Carter and Reagan, and then to be followed up by Howard Dean the other day suggesting that Palin could beat Obama, the Donna Brazile op-ed singing the praises of Palin’s political skills and finally Jan Crawford of CBS writing that “Sarah Palin is a seasoned executive more than qualified to be President” what you have are several trial balloons launched to ready the fear scenario once it becomes more apparent Palin will win the nomination.

But for the WH to even consider such a fundamental change in strategy so early in this election cycle suggests to me they don’t think Romney will be able to beat Palin and that the de-legitimization strategy of the past 2+ years has simply not worked to stop Palin in her tracks. Once Palin gains the nomination she will be seen as a much more serious political figure than she is now. The OWR is not stupid. Why start to demonize Palin only after she win the nomination? Instead let’s assume she will win the nomination and use the additional months to fine-tune our strategy and muster the resources necessary to “go nuclear” on Palin.

And if Romney wins, we can always pull off the shelf our Romney strategy of demonizing him to evangelicals and conservatives and hanging him with the Romneycare albatross causing a third party to arise, allowing Obama to sail the victory coming up the middle.

Bottom line: Obama, his war room and the MSM are becoming more and more convinced (especially after the first leg of the national bus tour) that Palin is going to win the GOP nomination. Don’t be fooled on who they say publicly is the most dangerous GOP candidate to Obama’s re-election bid. I certainly won’t be. Will you?