I'm not saying she isn;t popular, because she obviously is. I have no doubt that here support is deep among conservatives...but I suspect her support as a candidate isn't wide outside of that group.
Alaska electoral politics isn;t evidence that she is electable on a national level. 2006 was a good year no doubt for Palin even as a Republican, just as it was generally a bad year for incumbents. Susan Collins won reelection to a third term in 2008 by over 10%, defeating a dem congressman in a state that went for Obama by a wide margin. Despite all that, I wouldn't use Collins victory in Maine as an indication of anything just as I wouldn't use Palin’s victory in Alaska as anything.
Would I love it if Palin was to prove me wrong...absolutely. Am I ready to say that she is our only or best hope of actually winning...absolutely not.
“I can’t give you proof, just as you can’t prove that she is electable.”
I can’t prove that future events will occur, but I do know this. Palin has won elections against long odds and in a year where GOP candidates, incumbent and nonincumbent (Remember George Allen and Rick Santorum in 2006) were swimming upstream.
She is telegenic (the camera loves her) and she connects with a crowd like no one I have ever seen. She had a bad interview with Couric. You think Katie Couric can kill a Presidential candidacy and render a candidate with Palin’s talent unelectable with one interview? I don’t think so.
the Couric interview, the resignation. Look. If she hadn’t resigned, she would have been up in Juneau batting down ethics complaints and the course of the Health Care debate and the Tea Party movement would have been decidedly different. If someone is going to vote against her based upon Couric and the resignation, then they were never going to vote for her in the first place.
“I have no doubt that here support is deep among conservatives...but I suspect her support as a candidate isn’t wide outside of that group.”
Conservatives make up 40-45% of the electorate, maybe more, and probably 75% or more of the GOP electorate.. That is a pretty hefty base. In fact, I don’t think a serious observer could deny that she is the odds on favorite to win the GOP nomination in 2012. When she wins the nomination, it will be her against Obama. If the American people want to fire Obama, as I suspect they will, the alternative will be Palin. Period.
“Am I ready to say that she is our only or best hope of actually winning...absolutely not.”
Tell me who else is a) better positioned and more capable of winning the GOP nomination than she; b) tell me who is equally as well positioned and capable of winning it?
Finally, the GOP has nominated only one genuine conservative, who was also a really talented candidate, in in the last 45-50 years. (Goldwater was not a good candidate and for a variety of reason had no chance to win, and his nomination was nearly 50 years ago.) The result was two landslides. Why not try nominating another conservative who is a really good candidate? Do you see another candidate in the GOP who is a) a conservative; and b) a genuinely talented candidate. I do not. But I would be anxious to hear about one. That formula worked spectacularly twice in recent history and it has not been tried since.
“2006 was a good year no doubt for Palin even as a Republican, just as it was generally a bad year for incumbents. Susan Collins won reelection to a third term in 2008 by over 10%, defeating a dem congressman in a state that went for Obama by a wide margin. Despite all that, I wouldn’t use Collins victory in Maine as an indication of anything just as I wouldn’t use Palin’s victory in Alaska as anything.
Would I love it if Palin was to prove me wrong...absolutely. Am I ready to say that she is our only or best hope of actually winning...absolutely not.”
The Most Popular Governor
Alaska’s Sarah Palin is the GOP’s newest star.
BY Fred Barnes
July 16, 2007, Juneau
The wipeout in the 2006 election left Republicans in such a state of dejection that they’ve overlooked the one shining victory in which a Republican star was born. The triumph came in Alaska where Sarah Palin, a politician of eye-popping integrity, was elected governor. She is now the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating in the 90s, and probably the most popular public official in any state.
Her rise is a great (and rare) story of how adherence to principle—especially to transparency and accountability in government—can produce political success. And by the way, Palin is a conservative who only last month vetoed 13 percent of the state’s proposed budget for capital projects. The cuts, the Anchorage Daily News said, “may be the biggest single-year line-item veto total in state history.”
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With her emphasis on ethics and openness in government, “it turned out Palin caught the temper of the times perfectly,” wrote Tom Kizzia of the Anchorage Daily News.
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As recently as last year, Palin (pronounced pale-in) was a political outcast. She resigned in January 2004 as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after complaining to the office of Governor Frank Murkowski and to state Attorney General Gregg Renkes about ethical violations by another commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, who was also Republican state chairman.
State law barred Palin from speaking out publicly about ethical violations and corruption. But she was vindicated later in 2004 when Ruedrich, who’d been reconfirmed as state chairman, agreed to pay a $12,000 fine for breaking state ethics laws. She became a hero in the eyes of the public and the press, and the bane of Republican leaders.
In the roughly three years since she quit as the state’s chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the “body count” of Palin’s rivals. “The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah,” says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called “Voice of the Times,” which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.