I'm sure I'll take some hits for saying this. But one reason (out of many) why we're stuck with Romney is that Palin did not act when the conservative cause really needed her.
This is partially bollocks, and partially true.
Palin was going to run, and she would have been Goldwatered by the same Establishment that torpedoed Barry in 1964. As it was, the two flawed candidates who ran, Santorum and Gingrich, ran comical campaigns that both got dusted by Romney's money and firebombing. They were never serious opponents of Romney.
Palin also made the conclusion that the GOP was not as of yet a serious instrument of conservative reform. There was a tepid reaction to her Indianola Reform Speech, which will be seen as an important step in the dismantling of the Crony State Capitalist regime in the future history of this country. The Paultards have not quite matured enough to become a force in their own right in the Party, and the Reagan Wing of the Party, which she leads, is still too weak and disorganized, to challenge the Bush/Establishment wing of the Party.
I suspect though that she has something planned for the Convention. What I do not know. She wants Obama out in the worst way and is planning her own downticket campaign on her own principles. She won't let Romney or his people control her for one nanosecond. It's Palin's conviction that the Establishment GOP doesn't have the wherewithal in them to fight, although the Romney people would argue that the focus of the fight should remain on the economy.
So we'll see how this plays out. There may be an unwritten agreement between the Romney people and Palin that allows Romney's ticket to take the economic high road and Palin to do her own thing and hit O'Jesus in the gut with the Reverend Wright stuff. You all would be surprised at how much these people communicate with each other.
Best,
Chris
Chris, as usual outstanding post, your insights are always very interesting...
“As it was, the two flawed candidates who ran, Santorum and Gingrich, ran comical campaigns that both got dusted by Romney’s money and firebombing. They were never serious opponents of Romney.”
Palin’s usefulness would have been at this point to speak truth to power and pick a candidate for conservatives to rally behind. While she gave little signals here or there that she supported Newt, she did this all in as coy a way as possible. Even when she admitted to voting for Newt, she rendered it useless by not admitting this BEFORE the vote, and afterwards she even made it sound like another state specific endorsement.
A lot of people here keep looking for ways to imagine that Palin has these big plans or is doing this or that behind the scenes. As far as I could see, she was pretty much MIA during the entire primary process. Of all the interviews I saw, the vast majority of them were just her fulfilling her role as a commentator... not laying down the framework of some strategy or one woman campaign.
So as a result, with the accumulated lies pushed by Romney and his supporters, as well as his supporters in the media, with even guys like Rush Limbaugh remaining silent and doing just about nothing to counteract it, Santorum sucked up what remaining energy there was but just couldn’t explain how, besides being God’s candidate, he was better than Mitt Romney, and promptly he quit the fight. At that point, the media narrative became that Romney had already won, and no more discussion was allowed of any other remaining candidate.
The media, honestly, controlled this election from the beginning. Each and every one of their memes came out accurate in the end.