by Blue Stockings | She's already gabbling to the media about 2012.
Less than a week after she and John McCain lost their bid for the White House, a combative Sarah Palin on Monday night launched a full-scale media blitz that strongly suggests she's already on to Plan B...
If there is an open door in '12 or four years later," she told Fox News Monday night, "and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."
Palin's smile never faltered and her even diction never wavered as she talked with "On the Record" host Greta Van Susteren, whose interview tone was so friendly you half expected her to reach over and scratch Palin behind the ear.
Marc Ambinder explains why Palin is still every damn where we turn, showing all her teeth and perkily sharing her plans for the aggrandizement of her newly inflated ambitions.
Wonder why Sarah Palin is everywhere? It's not because she IS running in 2012. It's because, in order for her to think about running, she has to change the way that non-Republicans see her. It's a precondition.
Not every Republican in America is a wingnut. In fact, most are not. As a blogger, it's very hard sometimes to keep this in perspective.
In the national Election Day exit poll, fully 60% of voters said they did not consider her qualified to serve as president if necessary, while only 38% thought she would be ready to step in. Those figures were daunting enough, but new calculations from the exit poll provided by the NBC News political unit show that outside of the Republican base skepticism about Palin’s credentials reached even more imposing heights. While 74% of Republicans thought Palin was qualified, just 35% of independents and 9% of Democrats agreed, the figures (first aired on David Gregory’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Monday night) showed.
And while 40% of voters without college education thought she could step in, just 35% of college graduates agreed. Fully 63% of college graduates rated her unqualified....
Likewise, while Palin scored relatively better in the South-45% of southerners thought she was qualified, and 53% did not-she faced towering levels of resistance in the east and west (where voters by more than two-to-one in each case considered her unqualified.) The Midwest tracked the national numbers, with two-fifths calling her qualified, and three-fifths not.
In all, the figures underscore the dilemma Palin presents for the GOP: while quite popular among the party base, she faces deep resistance from voters outside of it, including many of the groups (independents, college graduates, residents of the coasts) who turned most sharply away from the GOP in last week’s rout.
I for one think that God---to whom she says she turns to "show her the open door"---should do exactly that. Though not exactly in the way she probably means.
Not that any of this is going to stop her from running. One of the commenters at Hotline, Carter Nicholas, commented:
She is the object, not the subject, of ambitions more odious than her own honest grubbing for office through painting by the numbers of the previous election.
I refer to the ambitions of her right-wing hagiographers, led by Kristol, Krauthammer and Gerson, to sustain the nasty triviality of our politics; and of the manifestly erratic opportunist who chose her with equally open contempt for this nation. It is truly silly to focus on her inadequacies, when mature malice retains its much sharper, more grossly inexcusable edge in the consciences of the partisan poseurs who procured her recent embarrassment.
Jonathan Martin thinks all this focus on Palin actually benefits McCain and his legacy.
The Palin obsession -- which she has fed by going on a media tour and returning to the Lower 48 for the RGA meeting -- obscures the mistakes McCain made in his own campaign (though some would say one of those was in picking the Alaska governor). The central debate in the GOP is not now what typically takes place after a party loses -- what the candidate did wrong or whether he ran too far to the left, right or middle.
Instead, it's entirely forward-looking, and based around whether Palin represents the future of the party. McCain will have a voice in this, yes, but the base of the party never cared much for him and McCain himself never has shown much interest in being a party leader. So now, as the battle over Palin begins, McCain can quietly begin to reclaim his own legacy and place in public life. That begins tonight with an appearance on Leno and will accelerate as he re-engages in the Senate.
I never thought Palin was going away and I have nothing at all to say about John McCain, so whatever. I'm sure the GOP king-makers like Kristol & Co. will give her a look, but a lot of things are going to change between now and 2012 and it's really and truly not possible for them to know now what sort of candidate will serve them then. The Impolitic comments:
I'm wondering if that neo-con confab in Virginia this past weekend decided to crown her as the future star of the GOP. Who better to lead them than Bush in a skirt?
Who indeed? Of course, of their crazed base gets much crazier, they may find themselves looking at an electorate---including many party moderates---where neocon isn't just a "dirty word," but is an actual dirty word.
PS. She doesn't care what liberal bloggers say about her, but she thinks Obama is cool. She apparently doesn't think much of bloggers in general, actually.
Ms. Palin directed most of her media criticism at liberal bloggers, whom she twice called, “those bloggers in their parents’ basement just talkin’ garbage.”
But she had a kind word for President-elect Barack Obama, who she said called her during the campaign to wish her luck.
“He was cool,” Ms. Palin said, with almost a giggle. “He said, ‘good luck, but not that much luck.’” (The Caucus)
Sure she's cute---just as cute as a pitbull puppy, with or without lipstick. But "cute" just might not play in the same way in 2012 as it plays now. The whole discussion is hilarious, and also reflects the extreme desperation of the GOP to retain some measure of relevance in the face of their repudiation by a good part of the electorate. The Impolitic again:
Of course if they are thinking she is going to save the GOP from oblivion, well, unsuprisingly, they're wrong again.
Memeorandum's got more reactions.
RECENT IDLYE POSTINGS
How Dare Those People Lose Everything They Own?
The Kippie Awards for Excellence in Wingnuttery
More Tales from the Nutterdammerung: Are You a Socialist or a Dupe?
Snark O' the Day: Did Obama Crib His Acceptance Speech from Hitler?
Comments