I’m not sure what it is about the dynamic of this campaign, but I haven’t turned my mind to what will happen to the GOP if the McCain/Palin ticket loses. I’m not sure all that many others have either, outside the backwoods of the right wing blogosphere where a lot have written off McCain and are feverishly discussing the 2012 ticket. There’s certainly been a fair bit of speculation around about the Dems’ future if Obama/Biden lose, and maybe all this is a reflection of the residue of the well known Democratic habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or a fear that while the uber negative campaigning so far doesn’t appear to have got much traction, that might just shift as we come closer to the election itself (which could also be why there’s been so much focus on Obama’s present level of support being “locked in” through early voting while he’s got momentum and on voter registration).
But, while the possibility that the Republicans could win can’t absolutely be excluded, it certainly is worthwhile posing the question of what happens if they do in fact lose.
Jonathan Freedland is one who has been thinking about where the GOP goes under an Obama presidency, and he makes quite an interesting case that Sarah Palin could position herself as a potential 2012 frontrunner. This is interesting for at least two reasons. First, Palin’s selection – among all the other obvious reasons – was a reflection of the failure of the “conservative movement” to produce a convincing Presidential candidate in the first place. One of the real stories of the swing away from the Republicans is the exhaustion and fracturing of many of the activist factions that were on a roll from the late 90s until just a few years ago. Secondly, it might explain some of the stories about friction between McCain himself and Palin over her tactics in this race recently.
They can’t resolve the neolib/ folksy conservative contradiction. You can’t be for defending good ol hometown and simultaneously advocating for massive tex mex immigration and export of jobs.
But don’t worry about the repubs tho. Everyone thought they were dead in the ‘nineties, after the Gingrich implosian, Dole’s defeat and Clinton’s apparent success with the economy.
Yet virtually out of nowhere, up sprung an instant “Dubya” president and eight painful years to learn the folly of plausible deniability, neo con style.
The Americans are a strange people.
They get their knickers in a knot over “Un Americanism”, yet find nothing wrong with the goon who walked a way with half a bilion from Lehman brothers, apparently due to the ransacking of pensioner funds for another role on the roulette wheel.
But if O’Bama, the first orphan Irish American suntanned pres, turns out to be as superficial as our own new messiah down under, it won’t be so long and that will be a sad thing.
Sarah Palin as 2012 frontrunner? *snort*
Of course, sillier – and worse – things have happened. She does appear to get the social conservatives dancing in ways that Huckabee and Romney never could. I just don’t know if the Republican party could sell themselves out so completely.
Feel free to demolish that last sentence with evidence, guys.
Actually, let’s just forget I said that. After Reagan and Bush II, I think it’s clear that qualifications aren’t necessary to be qualified to be Preznit de l’etats-uni.
OTOH, the evidence mounts that she’s one of McCain’s main problems. Lots of senior GOPers think she sucks.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/24/2399817.htm
Oh, and will she still be the Hawk Hawtness in 2012?
That is becoming one of the more amusing things in an almost amusing election- the repubs, who dragged Palin out of a soporific obscurity to save their own skins, now stack the faggots high, for a “burn the witch” town-square evening, for the same reason.
The televangelists as spiritual successors to the Winthrops of Salem?
Sarah Wildman in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/23/sarah-palin-evangelical-christian
Yes, they sure live on a separate planet.
“Prayer warriors”?
Funny how they keep preaching to people who were going to vote for them anyway, while alienating people they need, in order to work up the numbers for a challenge.
People who who might have thought twice, if something more rational had been forthcoming.
OK. So leave the repub right in the seventeenth century, if that’s what they are still so keen on.
There’s no salvation on the Far Right for the Republicans in 2012.
That doesn’t mean that the Wing Nuts won’t take control of the nomination process in that year however.
Conviction trumps compromise.
There is certainly a movement among the Buckleys and Sullivans in the USA to take the opportunity of this conservative disaster and try to reshape that side of politics post-2008 into something once again more intellectual and less dog-whistle.
Yes, the GOP has a major problem trying to reconcile the intellectual right and the evangelical right, but most major broad political parties across the world have similar problems. The ALP survives these by entrenching the factions in a framework, and giving them offices and staffs.
Obama is going to win and win big, and the Democrats are going to have all their Christmas’s come at once, but US electoral history tells us that the GOP will be back in 2010.
Palin may be back in 2012, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is hopelessly unqualified and suspect when it comes to walking the talk. She may have been a better VP candidate for another nominee, but McCain’s age and health make the prospect of a VP becoming President mid-term a real one, and Palin rightly deserves greater scrutiny because of it. She’ll be a very divisive figure in the GOP whenever she raises her head.
Maybe being seen in the right places (eg with Dobson) is enough, but if the Guardian is accurate, Palin understands as much about Christianity as she does about the role of VP — look at the fluffy nonsense she says to Dobson. OTOH if the Christian Right are more Right than Christian (and I certainly think they are), then her inability to articulate her beliefs may not matter.
Never mind that she could be serving a prison term between now and then.
good analysis of this here from a conservative perspective:
http://www.thenextright.com/jon-henke/sarah-palin-and-the-right
Key quotes:
“But to be the substantive leader of a political movement, she needs three things:
1. A clear, but sophisticated, political philosophy
2. A serious governing strategy to move the ball forward on her political philosophy
3. A support base, including grassroots and elite infrastructure, that can mobilize to defend her and advance her agenda
…
Does Sarah Palin have any of those things? I haven’t seen any evidence that she has the sophisticated political philosophy, or a good governing strategy.”
Neither have I.
Dubya had none of that stuff duke, yet he was politically successfull.
he had point 3
Before you all get too excited, read this: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_republican_war_on_voting
Palins problem is that she is basically really stupid and ignorant and this is becoming obvious to even the most rabid rightists. She is not part of the establishment the way Dubya is, they will leave her out on the melting tundra some-where.
Most likely result of the election? Obamah wins with the youf vote and 1 million gun crazed n****r hating rednecks go gunning for him.
Huggy
duke said:
Well that’s true. But if that’s the case, the premise of the article is bunk, as apparently you only need one of the three to be a success as a Republican and I seriously doubt any Republican has ever been voted for on the basis of their intellectual framework. People mention Reagan in that kind of light, but a lot of that is a comic book like retcon of the old fool. Goldwater tried it and lost.
It’s quite possible that Palin will be the religious rights de facto candidate-in-waiting after this campaign. Whether the religious right ends up with more or less power within the Republicans will be the thing to watch.
the bit I quoted is in response to opposing views from andrew sullivan and patrick ruffini. Note that it says that you need those things to be “the substantive leader of a political movement”, not president. The discussion is about where the right goes after losing this election – to simplify, will it be seen to be because of palin or because of mccain?
Not forgetting that the GOP is also the party of the gun and the military. Their unnecessary war in Iraq and the obscene disregard for the rules of war plus little medical/mental rehabilitation for veterans puts me in Huggys camp. And I reckon Barrie should keep his head down before the election as well.
A prison term for Palin will never happen. That would be hoping for too much, though she deserves it. But she will most probably be facing charges of violating the Ethics Act following on from the recent Troopergate report. A guilty outcome would strike a severe blow against her in a future run for the White House.
Palin unqualified to be President? Hmm perhaps so, however she is in good company. The current favourite’s claim to fame is turning his race into a profession.
McCain has been shafted pretty regularly by the religious right of the party. Maybe his greatest revenge will convincing them Palin is a Great White Hope.
Ha! She’s got the potential to be a Moses for those people.
That religious right is a rather inflexible & pernickitty outfit to deal with. McCain seems to have engaged in feud with so much of his own party that it is quite surprising he managed to pull off pre-selection.
Sarah Palin as president (small hurdle to get over: Gotta be elected first) would be more entertaining than Micheal Costa as Premier of New South. Nothing fills my heart with joy more than seeing ivory towers & entrenched rorts both being loaded into a rubbish skip.
The Big Unknown: Will her religious fundamentalist views be dominant, or subjugated to pragmatism? (my gut feeling is the latter)
What has Palin actually said that is so extreme exactly? At worst she is no more extreme in her views than what we would call a “good catholic”. She even has long standing gay friends. Is she for instance any more extreme than Reagan was?
There is so much hysterical nonsense being trotted out by the Left because wait for it she’s an evangelical Christian. Scary!
There also is this assumption that her appeal is purely to the Christian Right, all other conservative voters are apparently physically repulsed because a handful of conservative commentators don’t like her.
She appears to be gaining confidence daily, her supposed gaffes are dwarfed by Biden’s and 4 years from now she, unlike Biden, might have learned not to make so many. By then she will have 6 years expereince as Governor in contrast to Obama’s current nil executive experience beyond running a political campaign if that counts at all. She’ll be in the National US media glare for the duration of Obama’s presumed first term so will be far more battle seasoned.
She’s got an easy turn of phrase and obviously very telegenic and comfortable with the media glare beyond the recent “trivial pursuit” interviews
She will also find it incredibly easy to raise campaign funds the day after the election if she wishes.
You people have decided you KNOW what Palin is rather than actually looking to see what she really is. Very Foolish.
What happens in 2012 depends on Obama. If he is more Carter than Clinton, she’ll be there. She’ll have four more years of grooming and as she’s shown in the past, she’s a fast learner. It wouldn’t surprise me to see her run as a senator in 2010.
After this election, the thing that conservatives will remember above everything else (i.e. the instant PDS in the media and the rest of the left) is that Palin is a fighter, and she doesn’t give up. They’ll contrast that image with that of their prime candidate who mysteriously allowed his best rhetorical weapons to be turned on him.
You might be surprised to hear I don’t think much of the RNC’s focus on Obie’s very real links to Ayers and the questions they raise. Barry instantly jumped 7% in the polls on the back of the financial crisis, and that’s the nail that McCain needed to hammer. Instead, for no earthly reason, the economy is seen as Obama’s strength in this debate. The RNC and McCain are to blame for that.
Finally, are there still people out there who think Andrew Sullivan represents conservative thinking? On any issue? Yikes.
Could someone please retrieve my recent link from the spaminator?
McCain’s age in 2012 is one of the more signficant factors in his naming Palin VP such an insult to the nation. Her lack of qualification for the role is quite clear, despite her position as governor of Alaska, a state so riddled with corrupt GOP politicians that the only way they could maintain the state house was to put forward someone so thoroughly obscure as to be patently untouched by scandal, a situtation she quickly reversed, of course, power being worth nothing unless it is weilded without restraint. Unless she seriously embarrasses herself (or McCain) as VP, she seems sure to see her incumbency as a mandate to Presidential candidacy, unless McCain dares run for a second term. Because the “aging” factor of occupying the Oval Office for even four years, let alone eight, is quite obvious to any observer, it would again be merely selfishness and stubbornness that would drive him to do so, although we might at that point see at least the benefit of having him drop Palin for a more palatable successor, as Bush I should have done with Quayle. Nevertheless, should she run in 2012 or 2016, she would face, I think, substantial “old guard” opposition. Like McCain himself, there are many in the GOP who have a sense of entitlement, not just to their present office, but to their ambitions.
Greg: You don’t seriously think McCain will be back for 2012, do you? I expect he’ll retire after the election. What gave McCain his nomination was the at-the-time lacklustre GOP field. Palin stands head and shoulder-pads above that field now. She won’t be going anywhere, and the party will hang onto her for dear life. Her biggest threat is Obama doing a good job, and actually being the centrist he’s so far pretended to be.
As for being “put forward” by the Alaskan GOP, well, she fought the corrupt party machine all the way to where she is now. That’s the real reason most conservatives like her – not for the left’s hallucinations of speaking-in-tongues, cross-burnings or abortion-clinic bombings. Further, to open an old wound again, she’s way more qualified than Obama, so how insulted by the democrats are you?
According to her, anyhow. But her stories of her time as Alaskan governor have tended to be various flavours of bullshit.
Well, that’s part of the narrative the left is keen to establish, for sure. Like most narratives, it would be a fictional one.
Craig Mc, you don’t seriously believe, even in Alaska, that some small-town mayor gets the nomination without the party’s say-so, do you? And she’s head-and-shoulder pads above a two-term governor of a much more populous and no less complex state? Or even a one-term governor of Massachusetts, a bastion of the Democratic party? You swallow the camel and gasp at the gnat.
Greg, well she did it without the incumbent governor and party head. Usually those two positions represent the party establishment more than all others put together. Remember, even Obama wasn’t the candidate of his party’s establishment at first, but events progress.
If the 2008 GOP primary candidates couldn’t establish themselves in that field, they won’t ever – except maybe as VP choices.
McCain won because he was the candidate that no camp objected to, which says that all the runners-up had major problems within their own party. Romney would probably make a very good president but a Mormon candidate is a hard sell to the public and many in the party, so we’ll never know – sad, but true. Thankfully we’ll never have to find out with Huckabee, who is closer to lefty Palin fantasies than Palin could ever be.
Palin has none of the problems that afflict those two. Indeed she would unite and ignite the conservative movement if she chose to lead it in a way that McCain has failed to. If she has a rival for 2012, it won’t be any of the hands that were raised last time.
Palin will do the fastest disappearing act in history after she loses the election – to spend more time with her family – the Republican Party will see to it…
Why would the GOP run a religious conversative in 2012?, what sort of contra-narrative is that other than appealing to the base. With Obama in the White House who is going to win back the swing votes from the middle-class that have switched to the Dems (which have more likely swung for economic not cultural reasons), they’d be wise to skip Palin and run with someone like Romney who hopefully comes across a bit less phoney than Mitt, and then they might at least be in the race.
But it wouldn’t surprise me if in the next presidential run there is a schism between evangelical conversatives and the fiscal conversatives fracture, as the FCs try to avoid another Palin debacle (resulting in either the RCs or FCs staying at home on election day or voting libertarian or third-party candidate in large enough numbers to result in the loss of quote a few states).
Craig Mc – all your posts are spot on.
OK, the spaminator doesn’t like my links, so you’ll have to figure out this link for yourselves. It’s worth going there for the hilarity.
palinaspresident dot us
I think I know the link silkworm. Make sure you click on everything people. A bit of the stuff is too obscure american for me to follow, but it is cute.
Palin will do the fastest disappearing act in history after she loses the election – to spend more time with her family – the Republican Party will see to it…
Actually i heard FOX is pretty keen on nabbing her…..
If anyone saw her laughable recent performance on Saturday night Live, you’d conclude, as I have – she just aint serious.
Lefty E, It wasn’t any worse than Bill Clinton’s segment on the Arsenio Hall show, done during the campaign. At that stage in the campaign Bill Clinton had been written off as an also-ran.
Then again, considering how he conducted the presidency, it could be argued that he wasn’t serious either.
How is Palin more qualified than Obama for anything except lumbering her kids with very weird names and shooting any unfortunate animal that pokes its nose out of the forest?
Anyone who says Palin’s kids have “weird” names must stand in the corner and repeat the followig two words:
“Barack Obama”
“Barack Obama” may be perfectly a normal name somewhere.
As are the Palin children’s names among big fans of Jerry Springer.
““Barack Obama” may be perfectly a normal name somewhere.”
What about on a plaque on the Oval Office Desk ?
Not sure who the blokes here are singing the praises of Palin and the bunch of crooks thieves and liars who are the Republican party,I would like to think if there is any justice in this world Bush and his crooked cronies would be facing Jail time for what they have done.
On Palin, you to blokes have been watching to much FOX NEWs and believing the utter crap that they put out,if Obama looked sideways it a victory for McCain,but then judging from the stories coming out about the crooked Republicans trying to fix the voting system for court challenges later.
The sooner Bush, Palin, Cheney the whole rotten Corrupted system they have put in place is torn down the better
You know thinking who will the GOP candidate in 2012 is actually perplexing. Not that some of the GOpsters aren’t already projecting, but I can’t see the natural candidate, wouldn’t be surprised it its someone whose made it big in business – someone like Romney but with more sincerity.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1966134/posts
I reckon Huckabee and Romney will run again, some of the choices of some the diehards on the link are quite funny – Jeb Bush, General Petreaus, Newt Gingrich gets disqualified for believing in that “global warming cult,” Huckabee is too liberal (WTF)
Gosh, if only the more than 100 million folks who are going to vote him into the White House know that his name is really Barack Hussein Obama, thinks may turn out very differently.
PS. There are many more Blacks in the US with the surnames “Washington” or “Jefferson” than there are whites with those surnames.
Would the reappearance of those names on a plaque on the Oval Office Desk be just too “normal” to merit any mention at all?
duke@12: spot on.
What’s also done for Palin is the $150k that the Republicans spent on her clothing. If you’re going to present someone as a hockey mum, do that – but don’t spend a small fortune dressing her. Yeah, she needs to look nice but $150k is way too much – the whole ordinary hockey mum thing is shot, she’s just another pol who says one thing and does another. She’s committed the biggest sin in modern politics: she’s gone off message. She’s never coming back.
Noam Scheiber from The New Republic comprehensively demolishes the Palin spectre – with, of all things, a five-point plan here (subscribers only):
The Republican candidate in 2012 will be someone who had nothing to do with McCain or Palin this time around. George W Bush wasn’t busting his gut for Bob Dole in ‘96, and John Edwards (Kerry’s running mate in ‘04) is political roadkill today. If she was any more dead, she’d be eulogised by Elton John: Goodbye Sarah P, though I never …
If Palin wants to get into the Senate in 2010 to launch a campaign in 2012, she’s going to have to knock off the sitting Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Murkowski is a one of the handful of Republican moderates, pro choice and pro stem cell research. As Republicans go, she is the anti-Palin.
It could be quite a stoush. Myself, I reckon they should dispense with the primaries and go for naked jelly wrestling, best of three falls.
Of course, this is fantasy in more ways than one. Unless they are completely clueless, which is admittedly possible, the Republican party will realise that “energising the base”, all of maybe 20 million people, is not very helpful if you turn off the remaining 280 million.
If the Obama presidency turns out badly, sensible Republicans – the Governors of Minnesota, Michigan, what have you – will be lining up in 2012. That they weren’t in the race in 2008 is as relevant as Obama not being in the race in 2004.
In the meantime, watch the Republican party tear itself apart for the next two years. As they used to say in the 60s: burn, baby, burn.
I think Noam Scheiber only demolishes his credibility with that piece. Huckabee???
“one reason she remains so popular among working-class conservatives is that they follow politics less closely than the rest of us, meaning they’ve had less time to get burnt out on her. (Though I’d concede that her appeal to this group is based on more than novelty alone.)”
Palin’s appeal to working class conseratives, or at least the heterosexual men among them, is that they’d like to have sex with her, probably the kind where they get tied up and whipped.
But that will pass.
Interesting point about Fred Thompson. I kind of liked him. At least, I liked the character he played on Law and Order.
Spiros,
From what you say,she sounds a lot like Pauline Hanson.
Oddly enough, i had Palin hair a couple of years back. (see blog!)
Paul,
Hanson as I recall, said that abortions are a personal issue for women and they should decide for themselves.
So, in that respect, Hanson is better than Palin.
On the other hand, Palin has better teeth.
And she dresses much better. ($150K on clothes! What are made of, diamonds?)
Apart from both being 40-odd-yo women who have won an election, are good looking, and somewhat enterprising, there isn’t much in common between Pauline Hanson & Sarah Palin.
Please explain…
Now that Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte has gone over to the dark side it is Palin unbound.
From Kim’s link -
.
The Right in America are split three ways: there’s the liberal Republicans advocates of small govt, the flag wavers (McCAin) and the Bible thumpers – Palin.
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About 40% of the US population subscribe to beliefs associated with fundamentalist Christianity. These are not limited to, but include: the coming Apocalypse these days envisaged as a global war between Islam and Christendom with Israeli Jews either converting or perishing; the Rapture by which believers get whisked up to heaven to watch the Apocalypse in God’s own home theatre system; that the American system was originally intended to be a theocracy – a specifically Christian nation; that Science produces the Holocaust.
.
That’s 2 out of every 5 Yanks. I’d wager not all of ‘em would be so extreme but still 40% acquiesce to literal and highly selective readings of the Bible and endorse this views. They also breed at a greater rate than their relatively secular fellow citizens. Say the secular Americans have two kids and the fundamentalist ones three on average. Wait 3 decades and do the math. Palin might not come back but we’ll see more of her like and I fear by around 2030 or so they’ll have the US govt sewn up.
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Do they mind limited curiosity? Hell no! It’s practically mandatory! As Ann Coulter said: My faith and reason tell me that God created the world and I’m not particularly interested in the details. I’ll find out when I meet my Maker.
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In other words speculative inquiry, free thought, empiricism are out. This is exactly what happened in the Islamic world c 1000-1200 ACE. Before 1200 the Islamic World was the global centre of science. And now?
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Not so hot.
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America RIP it was good while it lasted.