[Governor] Palin a new kind of puzzle for national Republican Party

The Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | December 13, 2009 | Dick Polman, National Political Columnist

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sarah Palin. Need I say more?

Buoyed by a ubiquitous autumn, she has cemented her status as a brand that excites and exasperates, titillates and polarizes. Sort of like Madonna.

Jackson Browne, the singer-songwriter, once penned the lyric, "I don't care about Madonna/ Or the next thing she might do." The Republicans don't have that luxury. In the early jockeying for the 2012 presidential race, everything Palin does is potentially consequential. Nobody else in the GOP can touch her skills as a performance artist who plucks the requisite populist chords. The big question is whether it would be wise or ruinous to nominate her.

This is a new kind of dilemma for the Republicans, who are hierarchal by nature. They typically choose nominees who have paid their dues. John McCain was hardly a consensus party figure, but he was next in line. Bob Dole in 1996 was next in line. The senior George Bush in 1988 was next in line. So was Ronald Reagan in 1980, given his close loss in the '76 primaries. The younger George Bush in 2000 was deemed next in line because of his party establishment connections and pedigree.

Palin is something else entirely; establishment Republicans haven't quite figured out how to deal with her. They respect her gift for connecting with what she calls "regular Americans," but there are millions of hostile "irregular" Americans roaming the land, enough to make her a landslide loser. And there's something a tad weird about her newfangled habit of posting simplicities on Facebook.

Still, who else in the wide-open Republican field can generate so much buzz? Who else inspires such visceral, inchoate devotion? Among her fans - the kind of folks who would flood the Iowa caucuses in the winter of 2012 - she is essentially critic-proof, much like a badly written best-selling pulp novel. The more she is attacked for lack of substance, the more they love her. The more she is successfully fact-checked by the "elite," the tighter the ties with those who feel similarly aggrieved.

She has said some ludicrous things lately, at least by conventional standards. On a conservative radio show, she bonded with the wing nuts on the phony issue about President Obama's place of birth, declaring that "it's a fair question" to wonder whether he was born on American soil. And in a guest newspaper column, she bonded with the global-warming-denial crowd, insisting that "we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes."

It's probably futile to point out that, during the '08 campaign, Palin said the opposite, that man does cause weather changes. As she explained it (English students, do not attempt to diagram this sentence): "You know there are, there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts." But all attempts to hold her accountable are routinely dismissed by her fan base as persecution.

She is impervious to the rules that bind her more conventional rivals, and Republicans do find that intriguing. For evidence, look no further than the Gallup poll. Last month, 58 percent of Republicans nationwide said that Palin was qualified to be president. And yet, in the same poll, 65 percent of Republicans said they would "seriously consider" supporting her for president.

Think about that one: A sizable share of Republicans might actually support a prospective nominee whom they recognize to be fundamentally deficient. Perhaps this is easily explained. Many conservatives are congenitally hostile to government, so perhaps it's a logical next step to "seriously consider" someone who is ill-suited to perform the onerous, complex tasks of governance.

Indeed, within the "tea party" movement, Palin is lauded not for her credentials but for who she is perceived to be. She is regular folks. She shares their resentments, gives voice to their grievances. In this sense, she is eerily reminiscent of Richard Nixon, the scrappy kid born of humble origins who made a career of politicizing resentments, inveighing against the elite Eastern establishment that sought (in his telling) to keep him down. Today, none of Palin's rivals can match her Nixonesque ties to the "tea party" voters who will be crucial to the GOP's prospects in 2012.

The Nixon simile, however, is imperfect. Unlike Palin, who quit her day job two years before completion, Nixon logged 14 years in Washington before he ever ran for president, and by the time he was finally elected, he was already fluent in the nuances of foreign policy. And as skilled as he was at wooing the aggrieved members of the Republican base, he won two national races by capturing the swing voters in the center.

Today, Republican leaders are reluctant to publicly voice their private concerns about Palin's low ceiling; in the aforementioned Gallup poll, only 28 percent of independents deem her qualified to govern. Her birther remarks certainly won't boost that number. Nor will her remarks on global warming. And I doubt that independents will be charmed by her father's recollection of why she quit the first of her four colleges, in Hawaii. He recently told the New Yorker that the Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority-type thing and it wasn't glamorous."

The typical GOP tactic these days is to treat Palin with infinite care, as one would a live grenade. When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour - a former national chairman, Washington lobbyist, establishment fixture, and possible '12 hopeful - was recently asked on MSNBC whether he thought she was qualified to be president, he replied with the utmost caution: "Well, constitutionally, she sure is."

That was hardly a raving endorsement; rather, Barbour's remark reflected the party's unease about the tough task ahead, its crying need to tap into Palin's grassroots energy - without necessarily putting her in charge. This will be a long and delicate mission, all while waiting breathlessly for the next thing she might do.

*******

E-mail Dick Polman at dpolman@phillynews.com.

[STE=Q]

The more she is attacked for lack of substance, the more they love her.

Yah, right!

Sarah Palin has more "substance" in her lettle finger than 0-Bozo will ever hope to have!

STE=Q

[STE=Q]

TYPO: lettle = little

[The Comedian]

Sort of like Madonna

No, sort of like the leadership of Maggie Thatcher, the faith of Joan of Arc, the patriotism of Betsy Ross, and the wit of Ann Coulter, all wrapped in a beauty queen package with 10000x more management experience and iconoclastic vigor than the entire viper's brood of Obastard's White House combined.

But you wouldn't know that, because you "can see Russia from her house".

I've gone from disbelieving, to ignoring, to hating the fringe media. I don't know what comes after "hate", but it isn't pretty, and I am advancing up to it at full speed.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[euram]

And just who is Dick Polman? I’ll bet that this is the only column he has ever written that has been read by more than 100 people. I figure he must be fishing for some sort of pat on the back from the DNC, and maybe a little cash flowing his way to “stimulate” him to write more pieces attacking her.

[Regulator]

Who should be #2 on the ticket?

[AFreeBird]

Puzzle?

The Lady is their, and the Dems, Rubik Cube.

[AFreeBird]

[uncbob]

I have to disagree

Barbour the times I saw him reminded me of Cheney not Lott

[uncbob]

She’s untouchable now. She withstood the worst and bested them all and they know it

Bounced right off and they are beside themselves trying to figure why she doesn't cave in

[STE=Q]

"Sort of like Madonna"

----------------------------------------------------------

No, sort of like the leadership of Maggie Thatcher, the faith of Joan of Arc, the patriotism of Betsy Ross, and the wit of Ann Coulter, all wrapped in a beauty queen package with 10000x more management experience and iconoclastic vigor than the entire viper's brood of Obastard's White House combined.

EXCELLENT!

STE=Q

[PoplarBluffian]

Finny, I agree that the country is not ready for two women on the same ticket. I do think Michelle is as tough and solid as Sarah, but the ticket would be too vulnerable to sexist attacks from the left. Perhaps two female Presidents in a row?

[norge]

...establishment Republicans haven't quite figured out how to deal with her.

They'll quickly learn she'll be dealing with them.

[FastCoyote]

Dick, you ignorant slut.

[And there’s something a tad weird about her newfangled habit of posting simplicities on Facebook. ]

Actually, Facebook is now part of business, so Palin is avant garde in using it. And she writes well conceived editorials, she is no putz.

All they have left is name calling and innuendo.

[onyx]

Your depiction of Haley Barbour is both crude and ignorant.

He was one of the best, if not the most successful RNC chairmen, and he’s an outstanding conservative governor.

He’s never shown any interest in national politics, despite being pestered about it every fours years.

[SmokingJoe]

Dick Polman’s Skewed, Left-Partisan History Lesson

Dick Polman is a long time Philly columnist and extreme left-winger that rarely makes any attempt to seem “fair and balanced,” so it isn't surprising that his latest attempt at prescient punditry is a plaintive plea for the Democrats to chill out and just get along so that they can beat the “septuagenarian” McCain. But, his piece is so filled with horribly misconstrued historical analysis that it is hard to let him slide and mark it up solely as another forgettable example of the kind of partisan claptrap most of his work turns out to be. But, with the sort of half informed historical analysis he indulges in to cajole people to vote for the Democrats, this latest piece is too dishonest to just let it slide by. If anything calls for a fisking, this one does.

Polman starts his lamentably bad history lesson with this taunt to the Democrats.

If the Democrats somehow contrive to blow this presidential election, they should be consigned to the dustbin of history - or to a display case at the Smithsonian, where perhaps they can share space with the Whigs.

To which I say, heck, if the Democrats weren't consigned to the dustbin of history after supporting slavery, starting a civil war, losing that war after 620,000 Americans died, supporting Jim Crow, supporting Japanese internment, continuing to support Jim Crow, fighting civil rights, and building a failed and expensive socialist state, a little primary fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is certainly not going to do them much harm!

http://newsbusters.org/people/dick-polman

nuff said!

[Balding_Eagle]

Thanks, that needed to be said.

[Balding_Eagle]

Great column. I enjoy Leftists when the ‘go ‘round the bend’, and this ones a keeper.

I want Sarah to run, if for no other reason than to be able to read more of these spittle on the keyboard columns.

[jwparkerjr]

re: #2 on the ticket?

I like John Bolton. I think he can make the few liberal heads that manage to make it through Sarah Palin will definitely go ka-boom when it comes to him!

Or perhaps, Dick Cheney!

[jwparkerjr]

I have always liked him! I would love to see him on a ticket with Sarah Palin.

[yongin]

{I hope she makes a habit of writing her op-eds, doing interviews about serious policy matters. (She should go on Fox News Sunday for example to discuss energy policy}

Iagree. Unlike other public figures, Palin benefits from media overexposure. Palin needs more face time than hiding out in Facebook. She should try to get a Fox News Contributor job like Newt, Santorum, and Bolton. This way, she can appear on all the Fox News shows to discuss policy and build her gravitas. Being a Fox News Contributor has helped Huckabee .