The Possibilities of Palin
by Geoff Johnson
Oftentimes the political blogosphere has a discussion du jour (or du week, or month), with practically every blogger in the country offering their take on whatever issue has made its way to the forefront of the web-based national political conversation.
For the past couple of weeks there has been much discussion about Sarah Palin’s chances of capturing the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. It remains an open question as to whether or not Palin will actually run in 2012, particularly as she might make the (probably wise) decision that it would be easier, more enjoyable, and more profitable to continue to capitalize financially on her political brand through books, speeches, and media appearances (including, we have just learned, a possible appearance on that one show with that woman Kate and all her children – very presidential!).
There’s no question that she’s thinking about running though, and there will be literally millions of people begging her to do so. A recent campaign video (ostensibly about the 2010 midterms) makes it clear that Palin is positioning herself for a possible 2012 run and attempting to corner the market on conservative and perhaps even moderate women voters. The ad itself is actually quite well done, and in recent months Palin has been raising a lot more money through her political action committee and using it to pay for a scheduler, speechwriters and researchers, and a direct-mail campaign to raise further money. Basically her political strategy has moved beyond the “occasional Facebook post” phase.
Palin’s likely early path to the nomination is well articulated by MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews in this clip. Basically she’ll have an excellent chance to win the first nominating contest in Iowa, where evangelical Christians tend to dominate the GOP caucuses. She likely will not win the second contest in New Hampshire where more moderate independents will make up a healthy chunk of the vote, but if her performance is decent and she then wins South Carolina Palin may be on her way to the nomination.
Noah Millman argues that Palin “is the only candidate with an actual and substantial popular base of support, the only one who can generate real popular enthusiasm…she’s the candidate in the best position to coopt the organization that the Tea Party Movement is building.” Certainly this grassroots enthusiasm is her greatest strength, along with the fact that she will likely be the only female candidate and has high approval numbers among conservative women. As George W. Bush’s cousin John Ellis has pointed out, “If she gets half of the female primary voters and caucus attenders to support her, then she…starts at roughly 25% of the total vote. Throw in a third of the male vote and she’s at roughly 40%. Forty percent wins the Iowa caucuses, handily.”
Less “optimistically,” Ken Silverstein at Harper’s argues that Palin does not have a chance at the nomination (“the combined weight of the Tea Party wing and the Love-struck Horndog faction is powerful within the GOP, but not that powerful”) and in fact will not even try for it. Daniel Larison says her lack of “insider support or backing from party leaders” will doom her candidacy.
One year or even six months ago I would have been in firm agreement with Silverstein and Larison, but now I’m not so sure. In a previous blogging life, I predicted a Mitt Romney 2012 victory, and frankly would have dismissed Palin as a contender. Romney still has a good chance to be the nominee, but Palin is a very real threat in my mind, and I find her ability to stay part of the national conversation somewhat astonishing. There is no question, as Larison points out, that much of the GOP leadership is aghast at the notion of a Palin-controlled party (assuming, probably rightly, that it will lose), and they will try to sabotage her candidacy and/or coalesce around an “anti-Palin” candidate as soon as possible (perhaps Romney, perhaps some as yet unknown candidate like Senator John Thune or Governor Mitch Daniels, both of whom have had their names floated by folks clearly trying to provide alternatives to Palin, Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty).
But there’s a major Catch-22 for GOP leaders who want to take down Palin – they need to do so and certainly will try, but it also plays right into her strength. As insufferable as many of us find it, Palin plays the aggrieved victim of the “elites” and the “media” quite well, and many GOP primary voters lap it up, in large measure because they identify with it. Palin flatters voters’ sense of Nietzschean-style ressentiment less subtly than Richard Nixon did, but 2012 is likely to be one of the most ressentiment–based GOP nominating contests in decades. The question will be whether 2012 is enough like 1964. In that year conservative Senator Barry Goldwater pulled off an insurgent victory against the GOP establishment, one fueled in large part by what historian Lisa McGirr termed “Suburban Warriors,” grassroots conservative activists who have a similar counterpart in today’s Tea Partiers.
If Palin does win the nomination, the odds of her actually defeating Obama strike me as quite long, even if Obama is more unpopular in November 2012 than he is now. Wildly well-liked among Republicans, Palin’s favorable numbers fall of dramatically among all Americans. Since 2008 she has largely spoken only to friendly media, but this will become difficult or impossible if she runs, and repeats of the disastrous Katie Couric interviews will be a virtual certainty. It’s entirely possible, if not likely, that Palin will not only lose but lose badly, which would be disastrous for the GOP in what should be a good election cycle for them.
But I’d like to mention another possible effect of a Palin candidacy, one which is admittedly speculative (highly so). Were Palin to be nominated, and assuming the polls after the conventions showed her losing handily, space might open up for a third-party “moderate” candidate. This possibility has not been discussed much if at all, but a plausible scenario is not difficult to construct. Let’s assume the economy is still doing poorly in 2012 and Obama’s approval rating hovers around 40% – i.e. most Americans are interested in possibly voting for someone else. Yet Palin is not that someone, and polls suggest Obama would beat her by ten percentage points, in large part because many moderate voters are appalled by the notion of a Palin presidency. In that situation there’s a lot of room for a third-party candidate of the “middle” to step in, say “a pox on both your houses,” and storm to the front of the polls and the media conversation. Raising money would likely be a problem (unless Mike Bloomberg is willing to pay for it, or runs himself), but such a candidacy would have a lot going for it and a pretty good shot at victory.
Thus a Palin 2012 candidacy might not only prove traumatic for the GOP, it has the potential to fundamentally rupture two-party politics in the United States.
