The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Larison is still betting against Palin:
[A] Palin presidential campaign in the general election is the sort of thing that journalists and pundits would love to see for the same reason that many NASCAR fans watch those interminable, dull races: they are holding out hope for a spectacular, destructive multi-car pile-up. Imagine how terribly earnest and serious an Obama-Daniels competition would be. That would be no fun at all. It's much more fun to imagine one of the major parties consciously deciding to destroy itself, which is what a Palin nomination would be for the GOP.
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2 comments:
Doesn't this argue for exactly the point I made some time ago? That the GOP knows that running her in the general election is destructive to them.
Now, I am increasingly softening in my stance as it is looking, while still unlikely, less and less so.
I don't think it would be good for the GOP or the nation unless a viable third party rises with a more centrist message.
Yes, this author certainly agrees with you that the GOP probably wouldn't be dumb enough to nominate Palin.
Obviously it would be catastrophic for the GOP. Palin has something along the lines of 55% disapproval. I also do not think Palin will be the GOP nominee. But I don't think it's unlikely that Palin will be the nominee because the GOP has some sense of self-preservation -- primaries are all about base and intensity, and Palin has a hammer lock on those, and there's barely a single credible competitor. Enough Teahadists have drunk the Palin kool-aid that she will be the nominee if she wants it. It's just hard to explain how fervent and near-religious the radicalism is on the hard right, and they are more than willing to self-immolate rather than compromise on their standard bearer. Palin is "one of them" in a way that Bobby Jindal or Pawlenty and most especially Romney will never be.
So I do think the nomination is hers if she wants it. But I still hold out my opinion and hope that she will ultimately decide that she wants to be a celebrity (easy money, fame and adoration) more than she wants the hard work that is involved in actually running for office.
About the only possible scenario I can think of in which she runs but does not win the primary is if she loses in the first contests in IA/NH and pulls out there and then. It would not surprise me if she can't take the early setback and finds some pretext to withdraw rather than risk the damage to her brand that a full-on defeat in the primaries would entail. The base in IA is pretty crazy, so I think she wins there, but NH is a pretty sane place. So there's hope.
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