Both liberals and the establishment are suffering from severe denial about Sarah Palin and her plans.
Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin can't win the 2012 GOP nomination is not seeing the forest for the trees. It would be no historical anomaly. And she has quite a few political actors that owe her a chit or two now, even if they don't get elected to Congress or the Governor's mansion. She was always going to run in 2012. Why do you think she undermined without completely sabotaging the McCain campaign?
Remember Todd Palin telling people to "keep their powder dry until 2012" during the 2008 campaign? (A link to Newsweek there, not some mere blog.) People were all farklempt by her resignation from being Governor of Alaska. Well, she just wants to cash in on book deals. No. Quite wrong. It's that she couldn't be tethered to Alaska while getting ready to run for President in 2012. She couldn't go try to stop the Democrats she had put bullseyes on in the lower 48. Many of the people she supported in the primary elections won.
I didn't issue this robocall because I thought it would be funny for my liberal friends to hear. I did it because I knew for a fact that there were folks out there who hated McCain but who loved Sarah Palin and would "keep their powder dry until 2012." And I knew that would help Barack Obama.
She was always running in 2012. Duh.
From the minute she became Governor of Alaska, she began using that power to settle personal scores and get trinkets. From the second she became the Vice-Presidential nominee in 2008, she wanted to become American royalty and run for President. And settle some personal scores (as Lisa Murkowski about that).
Now, there are those who believe she is so far beyond the pale that the American people would never elect her President. I happen to be one of those people. Unless something has gone extremely wrong before the election, I can't see her doing anything other than suffering Goldwater's Doom. But things could go wrong. Unemployment is not abating. There could still be yet another financial scandal. What about a major terrorist attack? Things could happen. You are counting on the sanity and calm judgment of the current Republican party to keep her from getting nominated and you can't do that.
People said these things about Goldwater, about Ronald Reagan, about Christine O'Donnell, and George W. Bush, too. There are so many articles in a Google search asserting that Palin is no Reagan that I think the comparison must be apt, otherwise so many people wouldn't see the need to knock it down.
Speaking of which, I think there is a huge dose of "screw you" out there underlying all of this. I think people are saying screw you to pollsters, at the ballot box, and in the media. I don't think you can take it very seriously. I don't think in a calm moment so many people think we should do some of the things the pollsters say they should do. I also don't think they really believe people like Palin will be good rulers. I just think they don't care. I think people left right and center are exhausted from scandal, fear, and failures.
The "government sucks" meme is powerful enough to undergird a lot of this, and even mostly smart, most helpful actors on the political stage have been proven unable to fix a lot of the big problems. We can disagree on why, but it isn't inconsistent with the current state of affairs.
Oh, and about history. We'd love to believe that these people go away, but they don't. Yes, Goldwater got his ass beat, but only after launching the biggest political movement of the last 50 years from which our country is still suffering. Yes, Reagan was somewhat tempered by a Democratic controlled house, but his Supreme Court nominees continue to damage our country, to say nothing of the general zeitgeist he established.
Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Cabot Lodge, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush—that kind of Republican no longer exists. And even if they do exist, they are required to act like they agree with Sarah Palin by their mobmarshalls Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and Palin, or else they get the boot.
Anyway, I'm leaving the country if she gets elected (or installed) as President. I can't raise my kid with that.