Don’t You Want Me Baby?
Per Sarah Baxter in the London Times, Sarah Palin guesses she’s got to live her life on her own. Per Baxter, McCain wants to dial back the anti-Obama fury of the last week, while Palin thinks McCain is wimping out. Meanwhile, the McCain side notices that "Palin is no longer helping to attract women and independent voters to the Republican ticket. A poll for Fox News last week showed that while 47% of voters regard the Alaska governor favourably, 42% now have an unfavourable opinion of her." Per Baxter, McCain’s starting to wonder what history will say about how gracefully and honorably (there’s that word!) he lost the election of 2008, while Palin’s starting to position herself as the candidate of 2012. Hey, maybe. There’s just a little too much "blame the scheming dame" aroma hovering over the narrative to make me completely comfortable with it – not because of towering gender sensitivity but because these lazy tropes often obscure more complicated realities.
On the other hand, Palin herself, as an individual, has a pattern of turning on benefactors, and she really does have different incentives than McCain. And the timing is interesting to contemplate. Remember the perennial conventional wisdom of presidential politics: play to the base in the primaries and the center in the general election. The public’s memory is short, and attention on the primaries by the general population is light. So if you say some "extreme" stuff over the winter or early spring, you’ve got months to walk it back to where the squishy center feels okay. McCain blew the timing this year, which is another reason he’s heading for defeat – since the base never reconciled to him, he had to pick the Lioness of Little Diomede in late summer to shore it up. (The irony being, McCain really was, I’m convinced, the best or second-best general-election candidate the GOP could have chosen this year. I could be convinced that Huckabee was better, but that’s really it. McCain came into the general election with every advantage except a party base he could count on.)
Now think about Palin. She can be as fierce as she wants this campaign and has four years to dial it back as much as the middle requires. Meanwhile, she’s forging a lasting loyalty with the most hardcore elements of the GOP primary electorate. I’m not saying she’ll be successful at the pirhouette – in many ways the Palin operation is notably inept. But the opening is there. Palin can bank Crazy Capital now and draw on it for years.
Comment by bcy —
October 12, 2008 @ 11:28 am
I don’t think it’ll work. Even if she spends four years learning the issues and going through a degundersonification process, the independents won’t forget her current persona. Like Quayle, a botched introduction to the country doomed her future chances. As for Huckabee, he wouldn’t have been a better choice for the top of the ticket, but I’m convinced he was the best choice for #2. He could be doing most of the positive things La Palin is doing without scaring anyone or turning moderates away. He’d be more help in turning NC, VA, and IN around. Too bad McCain can’t get over his hurt feelings from the primary. In the New Yorker panel with Donna Brazile and Joe Trippi last week, during the “Is it over for McCain?” discussion, ex-Huckabee manager Ed Rollins said that Huckabee had talked to McCain once since March and had been asked to do one event for the campaign, when McCain was briefly in Arkansas. Another example of how McCain’s personality has limited his options.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 12, 2008 @ 11:34 am
I think Huckabee hurt his own chances of winning the top spot in the primary by continuing to run an explicitly identity-politics campaign when he didn’t need to. After the first couple primaries he had the fundies in his pocket. At the moment he needed to take them for granted and start selling himself to the rest of the party, he redoubled his efforts to play to their grievances, just not as obnoxiously as Palin has.
Agreed, though, that McCain’s personality flaws have really hurt him.
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 12, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
call me a horrible person if you will, but i make the following prediction about sarah palin:
her political future is going to degrade as quickly as her looks do, and that will be quite quick.
i’m an old guy, okay? i can see youthful, frisky, sexiness in women eligible for senior citizen discounts. so i’m not saying that no woman can be attractive after age 50.
but i will say this much: no woman can base the vast majority of her celebrity on her youthful sex appeal after age 50.
palin still can appeal to the rich lowrys of the world, because she is still plausibly a sexy chick (not my taste, but i can still recognize it).
in four years, that’s all going to be gone. it’s going to be kathleen harris all over again–an aging former vamp embarrassing herself.
look: if you’re hillary in your fifties, you still have a hell of a lot of strengths to offer the electorate.
if you’re palin, you are four years past your indian summer of sexiness.
this is it; this fall, she’s a celebrity. two years from now, she’s an embarrassment. four years from now, she is publicly shunned.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 12, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
“I could be convinced that Huckabee was better, but that’s really it.”
In retrospect, Romney might have done better.
Comment by GOPnot4me —
October 12, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
Crazy future? Maybe not
Comment by GOPnot4me —
October 12, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
http://gopnot4me.blogspot.com/2008/10/honest-mccaincampaign-poster-43-crazy.html
Link failed, sorry.
Comment by Joe S. —
October 12, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
I’m really scared of Huckabee. He’s whip smart and a very talented pol. He is the only one, IMO, who may have a workable plan for the renascence of the Republican party. We need a workable two-party system. Unfortunately, this likeable guy plays for Team Taliban.
That’s why I hope that Sarah Palin does well. Huckabee could actually win a general election. Palin, as bcy pointed out, cannot. She’s too fixed in the public mind. However, Palin could win a Republican primary, or at least neutralize Huckabee, This leave Romney (who has zero voter appeal) or Jeb Bush (an otherwise-formidable candidate with a fatal surname.) The Republican bench has been very thin for years.
I want a functional two-party system. But, as St. Augustine said in a different context, not yet.
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator —
October 13, 2008 @ 5:22 am
State Reviewing Per Diem Payments To Palin…
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s practice of charging the state when she stays in her home must be reviewed…
Comment by Leonard —
October 13, 2008 @ 10:53 am
I don’t think Palin’s appeal is only about sex appeal, although of course that figures in. But in any case she’ll still be an attractive woman in 4/8/12/16 years. Not as nice as now, I suppose not. But looks are not what the heart of her appeal is.
Her real appeal is that she’s a prole. She talks like regular folk do! The difference is, her accent, unlike a Southern accent, does not turn off the majority as much: everyone looks down on the South, but only whiterpeople look down on proles (and they try to hide it: it’s not nice!). If you’re like me, just compare the experience of listening to Bush (painful; I’d prefer to turn it off), as vs Palin (amusing. I mark the accent, but I can listen to it without suffering).
Everyone can be appealed to via identity politics. It’s what our politics are about, more than any other factor. The left got their identify wet-dream this time; but Obama’s identity doesn’t appeal to the know-nothing right and the know-nothing center.
Why do you think Huckabee did so well, his policy positions? (Whatever they were — do you know?) White people are really no different than anyone else, except that when we do identity politics we are very careful not to call it that. Wouldn’t be nice! Might make someone feel excluded!
Palin is what democracy ought to produce in our degraded politics: Someone Like Me, for the white working-class.
I’m still predicting Prez Palin within 17 years.
Comment by Jeffrey Quick —
October 13, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
You may be right about the “best candidate”, given the ignorance of the American people. But the past several weeks would have been MUCH more entertaining had Ron Paul gotten the nomination.
Comment by Derek Copold —
October 13, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
(The irony being, McCain really was, I’m convinced, the best or second-best general-election candidate the GOP could have chosen this year. I could be convinced that Huckabee was better, but that’s really it. McCain came into the general election with every advantage except a party base he could count on.)
Which is hilarious when you consider that these were the two candidates closest to Bush in policy and outlook.
There’s just a little too much “blame the scheming dame” aroma hovering over the narrative to make me completely comfortable with it…
Actually, this is one good thing you can say about her, because you can be sure McCain and his supporters are looking to hang this loss on her and the base. If she can get the knife into his back before he does it to her, it’s only fitting.
At any rate, from Palin’s POV, it’s better to be seen as mean and conniving than stupid. She’d rather be a female Nixon (a GOP Hillary!) than a female Quayle.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
October 13, 2008 @ 2:30 pm
I still think the GOP is going to go for a general next time around. Petraeus if he’s willing, Boykin (aka the “my god is bigger than your god” guy) if not.
Comment by Derek Copold —
October 13, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
It worked in 1952.
Comment by karen marie —
October 13, 2008 @ 9:43 pm
palin’s problem in 2012 is that she will still have all the dirty laundry laying around from 2008.
i haven’t seen anything written which points out the obvious problem with any potential palin presidency — she refuses to do press conferences or interviews.
bush has held the fewest number of press conferences of any president of the modern age. the average person is probably not aware of that. but a president obama will in all likelihood have frequent press conferences.
palin’s preference to exclude the press will be all the more heightened by that future comparison.
and we have not even discussed la palin’s religious affiliations.
Comment by Idi Amin's Last Meal —
October 14, 2008 @ 11:00 pm
When Bristol Palin’s on her third child by at least two baby-fathers in 2012, no way Sarah even has the Fundies in her pocket. That (obvious) hypocrisy will be too much to bear. Kids cannot be kept in the closet — except in Austria — like maf54 or Haggard’s buggery.