Aaron Goldstein puts his finger on the underlying source of the Sarahphobia that grips the progressive political establishment, the nutroots and the “news” media:
Despite the fact she was on the bottom half of a losing ticket and hasn’t held public office in more than half a year three cable networks provided live coverage of her address to the Tea Party Convention last Saturday night in Nashville.
Which begs the following question:
Is there any other private American citizen who could command that sort of undivided attention?
And the answer is, of course, self-evident:
The answer is nobody else could and liberals know it all too well.
There has been a lot fustian laughter from our progressive friends about Palin’s “palm reading” (even as they ignore Obama’s absurd reliance on his teleprompter for every exchange short of ordering lunch), but the primary emotion these people experience when they think of Palin is fear.
And their fear is well founded. She can be a serious contender for the White House if she decides to run. This analysis by the Left’s favorite statistician, Nate Silver, outlines several paths Palin has to the 2012 GOP nomination (factor out the snide sops he throws to his smug readership):
Palin Plan A: Win Iowa. Win South Carolina. Clean up in orange states. You probably have enough momentum to survive the consolidation of the GOP field which is liable to occur at this point.
Palin Plan B: Lose Iowa narrowly, especially to a Midwestern candidate. Hope that a Southerner isn’t running strongly and win South Carolina. Clean up in orange states. Then you anchor in the South, winning Texas (green group), Florida/Georgia (gold group) or Indiana/North Carolina (purple group). At some point, you need to break through and win a big Midwestern battleground like Ohio or Wisconsin.
Palin Plan C: Win Iowa. Lose South Carolina narrowly to a Southern candidate. Regain momentum in orange states. Hope that green states vote next and aim in particular for a big win in Texas. If it’s the gold states instead, go all-in in Ohio and Pennsylvania. If it’s the purple states, you’ll need some help.
Her biggest advantage is that her primary opponents would likely be Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Both are good men, but they are … well … dull. Putting them next to Palin in a primary would be like putting cubic zirconia next the Hope Diamond. No one would look at them.
Our friends on the Left understand all of this implicitly, and that is the source of their Sarahphobia.
Comments 5
God, I hope the field for 2012 is a lot deeper than Huck and Romney…
Posted 11 Feb 2010 at 1:22 am ¶How do you feel about Palin aligning herself with the racist teapartiers, David?
Posted 11 Feb 2010 at 7:16 am ¶Marc, this kind of stupdity is what Rahm Emanuel was talking about when he referred to the nutroots as “effing retarded.”
I don’t take the whole “racist Tea Party” meme any more seriously than I took Sullivan’s conspiracy theories about Palin’s uterus.
It’s just another symptom of Sarahphobia.
Posted 11 Feb 2010 at 7:42 am ¶So, I take it you would be happy to share a platform with Tom Tancredo?
Posted 11 Feb 2010 at 8:39 am ¶Well, Marc, I see we’ve moved beyond the usual straw men and red herrings to the venerable guilt-by-association device.
Your side has no credibility on the race issue. Even if we ignore the Left’s long history of anti-semitism (particularly in Europe), we still have the white supremacy that was the raison d’être of the Democrat Party for a century and a half.
As to the Tea Party movement, I (unlike you) actually know a few of these folks. The most committed of these friends works for an international charity organization and spends his life building homes for poor people, few whom are Caucasian.
The racism meme is just another way of suppressing dissent. Unlike craven Brits and Europeans, however, Americans are not so easily cowed. You can slander us all you like, but we will be at the polls in November to throw the bums out.
Posted 11 Feb 2010 at 11:21 am ¶Post a Comment