Sarah Sarah Quite Contraire
The head of the Republican Governor’s Association said on Friday that in emails sent to him moments before she announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin discussed expanding the role she played in the Republican Party.
“Part of her decision is she wants to spend more time campaigning for candidates,” Nick Ayers, the executive director of the RGA, told Fox News.
In other words, [edit: if this story checks out], she is trying to claim the mantle of Republican leadership and thereby be considered the de facto leader going into the 2012 GOP nomination contest. GOP Leadership is not going to come from the Senate or House–what do you think Eric Cantor is going to run for President? Sanford’s out. The moderate Republicans are going to have a helluva time winning the primary (e.g. Charlie Crist). Newt’s too old and too f’in crazy.
I’ve always thought Huckabee was the front-runner for 2012. Pawlenty with an outside chance, but he’s not exactly telegenic. The outside chance X factor candidate would be Gen. Petraeus but Obama has seemingly neutralized him (for now) by putting the Gen. as head of CENTCOM and getting him on board with Obama’s Af-Pak policy.
Palin therefore has to steal the ground on the social conservative base from Huck. He’s gone for the talk show thing, but she appears headed now for hard campaigning.
On the one hand I actually appreciate her retiring. Given that she doesn’t want to do the job she was hired for I mean. Once a girl like that has seen life in the big city how is she gonna go back to the sticks of Alaska? She’s clearly not interested in being Governor, so I think it’s actually the right move in terms of putting somebody in the position who will be focused on governing. Presumably Gov. to be Sean Parnell will be interested in his own political career as Gov.
While the commentary consensus (so far) seems to be this means her political career is over, I wouldn’t be so fast to write her off. She’s trying to replay her rather unlikely win in the Alaska Gov. race. Go hard to the base and get a deeply personal, extremely loyal following. Then expand from there to reach out to the middle. And force the issue by deploying cultural war battles.
We will see. This is a major gamble on her part, but if she gets spots to campaign for others she could build a network on the national level that could in theory catapult her to the Republican Nomination. If she doesn’t get the return calls from local GOPers running for House, State Senate seats, PACs and the like, then she’s toast. [Read more →]
July 3, 2009 29 Comments
