Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha By FRANK RICH

[kpete]

Op-Ed Columnist
Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha
By FRANK RICH
Published: November 20, 2010

Palin is on the top of her worlds — both the Republican Party and the media universe. “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” set a ratings record for a premiere on TLC, attracting nearly five million viewers — twice the audience of last month’s season finale of the blue-state cable favorite, “Mad Men.” The next night Palin and her husband Todd were enshrined as proud parents in touchy-feely interviews on “Dancing With the Stars,” the network sensation (21 million viewers) where their daughter Bristol has miraculously escaped elimination all season despite being neither a star nor a dancer. This week Sarah Palin will most likely vanquish George W. Bush and Keith Richards on the best-seller list with her new book.

If logic applied to Palin’s career trajectory, this month might have been judged dreadful for her. In an otherwise great year for Republicans she endorsed a “Star Wars” bar gaggle of anomalous and wacky losers — the former witch, Christine O’Donnell; the raging nativist, Tom Tancredo; and at least two candidates who called for armed insurrection against the government, Sharron Angle and a would-be Texas congressman, Stephen Broden, who lost by over 50 percentage points. Last week voters in Palin’s home state humiliatingly “refudiated” her protégé, Joe Miller, overturning his victory in the G.O.P. Senate primary with a write-in campaign.

But logic doesn’t apply to Palin. What might bring down other politicians only seems to make her stronger: the malapropisms and gaffes, the cut-and-run half-term governorship, family scandals, shameless lying and rapacious self-merchandising. In an angry time when America’s experts and elites all seem to have failed, her amateurism and liabilities are badges of honor. She has turned fallibility into a formula for success.

Republican leaders who want to stop her, and they are legion, are utterly baffled about how to do so. Democrats, who gloat that she’s the Republicans’ problem, may be humoring themselves. When Palin told Barbara Walters last week that she believed she could beat Barack Obama in 2012, it wasn’t an idle boast. Should Michael Bloomberg decide to spend billions on a quixotic run as a third-party spoiler, all bets on Obama are off.

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/opinion/21rich.html?_r=1

[msongs]

1. based on the amt of posts on DU about her youd think she was a democrat lol nt

[PufPuf23]

33. Maybe Palin will have a come to "Archetype FDR Archangel Perfected" moment on the road to Wasilla?

go Democratic; embody the best of humanity in love for fellow travelers only less than a reverence for Nature's God; hire honest help to run the money and power psychopaths out of a secular, and make a USA that we can be proud of as a beacon to the World as we are taught.

Military into plows of sustainable, quality lives at home and in foreign relations.

This my first Palin post, cynical and fatalistic.

etc etc etc what a world never imagined in my youth.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. DU posts are mainly against politicians

Bush had a huge number of DU posts about him, 99% bad. A lot of posts about Obama are critical. I think there were more posts about Pelosi in 2006-08, when the median DU post about her was "she's awful, I hate her" than there have been between 80-10, when she's been seen as perhaps the favoured Democrat of the leading lights of the party.

[Ikonoklast]

2. God, I hope so. It would assure a Democratic landslide.

People here that post Palin as a formidable political force are laughable, as is Frank Rich.

She wouldn't get past Iowa if she ran as a Republican.


The Republican Party PTB would bring every available asset they have in their arsenal to destroy her.

I haven't forgotten that she almost single-handedly sunk McCain's shot at the White House.

Who in their right mind thinks that she would do any better on her own? Her support is a mile wide, and not even an inch deep.

[Juche]

8. Don't be so sure

About 2/3 of the GOP voters in the 2010 midterms identified with the tea party, and the tea party generally has very high opinions of Palin.

In 2010 pretty much anyone with an R next to their name won in any remotely competitive race. I don't know if the same will happen in 2012 too. But you can never be sure. Sharon Angle promotes McVeigh style domestic terrorism and still won 45% of the vote in Nevada.

And at first she almost won McCain the presidency. 538 was following the race and showing Obama in the lead, but when Palin was picked McCain had the lead and was winning states like Colorado, Ohio, Florida, etc. Only when the public found out she was a moron and the economy collapsed did obama pull ahead again.

[Ikonoklast]

11. The Teabaggers all came out to vote....all of them.

Where are they going to get more Teabagger voters from? Democratic ranks? Doubt it.

If they don't get mainstream Republicans to vote for their candidates, they lose every election.

Angle got the Republican vote because she was the only game in town; if you are going to count all her supporters as Teabaggers, you are being a tad disingenuous.

I would also venture a guess that a lot of Nevada's vote was a protest vote against Sen. Reid on the economy, yet...he still won.

Palin will never hold a national elected office in this country.

[pnwmom]

16. Look what happened in Alaska, with a 3 way race.

There ARE enough teabaggers to come within shooting distance in a 3 way race.

[Ikonoklast]

22. Alaska is not the rest of the country. Not too many three-way races on the national scene.

And everything the Teabaggers there did was for naught.

They ran a candidate, and they lost...to a write-in candidate that they beat in the primary.

That's a repudiation of their candidate as well as their philosophy.

[pnwmom]

30. Did you read the OP? Rich specifically mentioned the possibility of Bloomberg

entering the race. That was his point. IF a third-party candidate like Bloomberg entered, all bets are off.

Even Nader could be enough to toss the race to Palin, since she's got 45% approval already (and will have more by the time the media's done giving her the charm treatment). If Nader drew off even a small group of the progressives, we could end up in an election similar to 2000.

[MadMaddie]

42. The other point is it was a midterm when the

turnout was average according to history and the sitting party loses the House or the Senate.

The number of Democratic and Moderate voters did not turn out for Mid-Terms but they will turn out in 2012. The World views Palin as a threat to any stability that could be sustained, the Supreme Court will rue the day they passed that damn law.

[pnwmom]

15. Not with a third party candidate like Bloomberg in the mix. n/t

[CrispyQ]

38. Babs Bush's comment about her reveals how TPTB feel about her.

"I sat next to her once, thought she was beautiful, and I think she's very happy in Alaska," Bush said, before adding, "and I hope she'll stay there."

Bush 43 was a puppet - they could control him. Palin is a loose cannon. She'll defy them just to say that she defied them.

[Bigmouth]

3. i am officially making it my mission

to do everything humanly possible to prevent this wack job
from becoming anything more than a joke.  i cannot stand her
or the people who follow her.  i have stopped talking to long
time friends because of their teabagging ways.  half of this
country has either lost most of its brain cells or has gone
insane.  teabaggers make rediculous non-arguements and
personally attack anyone who doesnt agree with their view of a
utopian society - that is every man for himself dog eat dog
anarchy.  we cannot afford to regress!

[pnwmom]

18. Welcome to DU, bigmouth! Sounds like a good mission to me! n/t

[lovemydog]

29. great post

Welcome to DU. I know what you mean. I cannot stand teabaggers. I've tried posting with them on another site. They don't listen to reason. They are rude and self-absorbed. And idiotic.

[AsahinaKimi]

43. welcome to DU

Agree!

[renate]

47. welcome to DU!

:hi:

[EFerrari]

4. Palin talks like a tea klanner but remember, she was the Neocon's pick.

I laughed when they ran Junior, too.

[Frank Booth]

10. Yep. Bill Kristol, for example, loves her.

She's got the support to run a winning campaign, and if she gets the nomination the Republican party/corporate/billionaire/neocon power structure will do all it can to see she's elected.

[pnwmom]

20. Yes. And Reagan with Alzheimers. They love dim-wits they can control. n/t

[readmoreoften]

23. Oooo TEA KLANNER. I like it!

[BeyondGeography]

5. Rich uses more words to say nothing new than any columnist out there

Overrated, like Palin.

[NoodleyAppendage]

6. Palin's body language was very revealing when she said she could beat Obama.

Her eye movement and lid closure at the moment of her response to the Barbara Walter's 2012 question suggests that she was LYING when she said she believed she could beat Obama. She's not the confident Tracy Flick she likes for all to think...just look at her bailing on Alaska office when the going got tough. Palin is DANGEROUS and crafty, but only because she is driven by a deeper fear of the self-realization that she's an empty shell of a person devoid of soul or substance.

J

[independentsrule]

7. Dude... you don't get it...

Dude... really? You don't know? All us folks that tune in to watch her don't like her. She's not on top. We just like to laugh at her and make fun of all the silly things she says. I was talking with some friends and it's like this, "OMG, did you watch Sarah Palin's Alaska? She's so hick dumb." As for her daughter, it's like this, "OMG, did you see Palin's daughter on Dancing With The Stars? She's so lame she thinks she's actually doing good and deserves to be there."

None of this translates into votes. That's a big wrong assumption the author of this article makes.

Just because we like to watch her and laugh at her, it doesn't mean we are going to vote for her.

[spin]

12. You may be the one who doesn't get it ...

You have great fun laughing at Palin and calling her "hick dumb". You and your friends come across to many Americans as elitist intellectuals who look down on people who live the the "fly over" states as illiterate rednecks.

The people in many areas of the country identify with Sarah Palin far more than they identify with you. When you insult her, you may as well insult them. Americans love underdogs and she may be the ultimate political underdog.

Of course, you are not going to vote for Sarah Palin, nor am I. (I feel she lacks the experience to be President and she quit her job as governor in Alaska.) But we and other voters like us may not be able to prevent her from becoming President.

Remember the actor Ronald Reagan or G. W. Bush. Most people didn't think they were extremely intelligent and many laughed and joked at what they said. Both won two terms as President and both defeated candidates viewed as smarter than they were.



http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/11/21/bush2_wideweb__470x358,0.jpg

[Arkana]

14. I also recall that neither of them had the checkered past in the public eye

that Sarah Palin has.

And Dubya didn't win his first term. Al Gore received half a million more votes, and that was WITH that godawful set of campaign advisors.

[spin]

26. Dubya didn't win his first term?

In the United states a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose the election because of the Electoral College.

Arguments can be made that the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush the Junior by ruling that Bush won Florida. The bottom line remains that history will show that Bush was the 43rd President of the United States.

There were rumors of problems in the past of Bush the Junior.

Bush plays the charmer who wants to be taken seriously
January 23, 2000

Much has been written of the irrepressible Bush's checkered past — including unsubstantiated rumors about cocaine and dancing on tabletops in less than full attire. Bush has referred to this chapter of his life as the "so-called wild, exotic days" of his youth.

***snip***

While the three C's may be critical on the campaign trail, effective presidential leadership often is the function of a fourth: George W. Bush may have cash, charm, and charisma, but unresolved in his candidacy is the content of his character.
http://www1.csbsju.edu/uspp/election/bush012300.htm

[Ikonoklast]

17. But neither of those candidates went off the reservation.

Neither of them bucked the Republican power structure, in fact, they let themselves be used by it, completely.

Palin, on the other hand, doesn't seem to know or care if she alienates the Republican power brokers.

THAT is the difference.

[spin]

28. The interesting part is that going off the reservation ...

may actually work to her favor.

The Republicans are not all that popular with conservatives. They are seen as bought and owned by the big corporations just as the Democrats are.

Voters are sick of long term politicians and power brokers.

[kentuck]

9. This is rather true...

"She has turned fallibility into a formula for success."

[Arkana]

13. Obama would roll to victory over that clueless hag.

All he'd have to do is not shit himself during debates.

[pnwmom]

31. Dream on. Did you miss the November election?

The Rethugs will do everything to keep the population unhappy and to blame all our problems on Obama. And anyone the Rethugs put up will be assisted by the media, who just love a "horse race."

[live love laugh]

19. Lie: "Republican leaders who want to stop her, and they are legion, are utterly baffled about how to

She is a tool--a decoy. She will be removed from our view when those who are financing her every move--and it's not the Tea Party but Republicans who are backing her--decide to put her back on the shelf.

She is out there so that when another equally evil Republican candidate (ie., Jeb) runs, many will breathe a mistaken sigh of relief that Palin isn't winning or running. She won't be going to the White House in 2012. I guarantee it.

[Mz Pip]

25. Trojan Horse?

Could be. Though even the serious republicans, those who do not have the brains of a lizard, would probably back her if they thought she really could win. She's be like Bush.

Who would be her Cheney?

[live love laugh]

27. Her Cheney? I don't think there has to be a Cheney. She will do the bidding of her financiers

no matter who her running mate is.

I truly believe the protestations of Rove and Barbara baby-in-a-jar Bush are orchestrated. Certainly Palin makes Barbara and
Rove (and probably a lot of other people)feel better about Dimson. Palin is a constant threat in the if-you-thought-Bush-was-bad...vein. She's a constant reminder that things could be even worse.

[Arkana]

34. They know exactly how to stop her--they created her.

Ultimately, Sarah is beholden to the GOP for everything she has, and if they want to shut her out they can do so--but they don't, because she's a useful idiot.

[readmoreoften]

21. Really, she's no worse than any other Republican. Another George Bush.

Let's face it. If Palin wins its a bottomless bucket. If another Republican wins its a 2 inch hole. If a Democrat wins it's a centimeter hole. Problem is we've got a few miles to walk and there's a goddamn hole in the bucket either way.

[ProSense]

24. Everything, all the noise

the MSM, including Rich, have been on a mission to rescue the Republican Party from ruin.

"Should Michael Bloomberg decide to spend billions on a quixotic run as a third-party spoiler, all bets on Obama are off."

Michael Bloomberg? He has got to be kidding.

The Media = Palin Central

[Arkana]

35. Bloomberg wouldn't go third-party if he ran. He'd run as a Republican,

because that's what he is.

[BzaDem]

37. WHAT? You think a pro-choice, pro-gun-control, pro-mosque Republican could win a primary? n/t

[Arkana]

40. Well, Rudy Giuliani tried, and he was at least two of those things.

[PJPhreak]

32. This scares me to death,

There is another thread here tonite about how the '10 voting patterns ran,The coasts voted D,in between voted R.

I live in rural Kansas,Make no mistake these folk WILL vote for Falin!

Just Remember...Liberal Kansas is NOT Liberal,Nor is Wichita,Topeka,Garden City,Dodge City,Newton,Winfield,Chunte,Fort Scott...you get the point.

Being a Progressive Kansan is like being a Black man at a KKK Rally.

And Kansas is only one state.

[bvar22]

39. After the MANDATE kicks in in 2014,

and MILLIONS of Americans are forced to BUY Insurance they can't afford to use,
Democrats will be unelectable for a generation.

The Democrats passed a Republican Health Insurance scam without forcing the Republicans to take ANY responsibility.
ALL the Republicans have to do is sit back and say, "Yep. We opposed it. Told Ya."

Whoever is the Republican nominee for 2016 is a sure thing.

[Imajika]

41. She could win in 2012...

It is unlikely, but it is possible.

My guess is the ticket will be Palin/Rubio.

If the economy is terrible, she could win.

[TBF]

44. I think that could happen as well -

in which case they'd have Texas and Florida right off the bat. She could win with him.

[Imajika]

46. And Rubio is a teabagger and Cuban...

With him, they'd hope to win Florida and maybe cut into the Latino vote nationwide.

They'd still likely lose in 2012, but that sets up Rubio for a run 2016.

Rubio is the GOP's big rising star. It really is a shame we couldn't deal with him this year when we had the chance.

[Mimosa]

45. Yes, she might win the 'na na nanana!!' vote (those who are very angry at Obama)

The bad economy, the ineffective health care 'reform' which won't help most until 2014 if at all, and now the humilation patdowns by the TSA are all going to bounce back on Obama, fairly or unfairly.