Palin in 2012 ?

[kenfrequed]

Palin is not the real Republican VP candidate. There. I said it. Lightning has not struck, black helicopters have not raided my domicile, and Jesus is still comfortably cooling his heels somewhere after his two millennia of physical therapy for carpel tunnel and work related ankle injuries.

How do I know this? Because politics is theatre and most big and serious theatric productions have more than one act.

Let me give it to you carefully and build the mood. For the next two weeks Palin-tology will begin to wear out. Palin’s inability to believe in Paleontology will play some role as will her book banning bonanza. Her ignorance, narrow mindedness, and her lies will make the media less and less sympathetic towards her. Particularly when you factor in that she is not doing any serious interviews.

Towards the end of it the McCain campaign will cry out that Obama isn’t talking about the issues and they will refuse debates because Obama wouldn’t go to debate McCain in front of his Republican stacked town hall meetings. They will likewise refuse VP debates for the same trumped up reasons.

In about two or three weeks, after a week long tirade by McCain about focusing on the issues (it will be in Fox talking points high about that time), there will be a major announcement from the McCain campaign.

Sara Palin will make a prime time speech where she will resign as the VP candidate and go back to Alaska. It will seem so human. She will break down and tear up about two-thirds of the way in. She will blame the democrats for playing image over substance and, in a true Rovian fashion; she will get away with it. It will be full of fake humility, scattered with religious references and reverence for John McCain. She will even say that the presidency, the future of America, and the World, are all too important to risk ‘not’ having McCain as president.

She will stitch up the religious conservatives that were looking askance at the McCain ticket

After it the media will tear itself apart for a week while right wing commentators crow and gloat and bray. O’reilly will have to order his loofas in bulk that week. Fox news will decry how negative Barak is and how much Democrats hate small towns, women, Christians, puppies, change, and rainbows.

McCain will get a post ‘Palin-leaving’ bump and then he will get another when they wheel out T-paw, Mittens, or perhaps a real Republican ‘strong-man’ candidate. It will play as the Republicans fighting back. The new VP candidate will give them yet another bump. Whenever the Republicans get backed into a corner on an issue for the next ten years they will throw out the one-liner: “You aren’t going to do to me what you jerks did to Sara Palin, I’m going to fight back”

Palin will give soulful interviews full of fake pathos and all that shit. Palin will win in the Repuke party by being the martyr-candidate and her national profile will be pumped up for 2012 or 2016 depending on what happens this year. She will give speeches and continue to fire up the religious base that have been wavering and having doubts.

All of her sleazy attacks on Obama will be conveniently disassociated with the ticket, the way a prosecutor playing rough on a witness before a jury retracts a tough (but unfair) question in the movies.

Overall I give Palin a 40% chance of leaving the ticket.

The real question is what can we do to stop this?

[tblue]

1. Just shoot me now.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Palin ain't leaving the ticket, thank god.

And three months from now everybody will have forgotten who she is.

She'll crop up again ten years from now, Phil Gramm style, in a scandal involving a S&L disaster, an astronaut, millions of tax payer dollars, and adult diapers.

[kenfrequed]

7. We can only hope.

Still it is what I would do if I had the republicans resources and a 'facts-soft' beauty queen drop out as a candidate.

I really hope I'm wrong about this because this is the kind of stunt that makes a campaign tough to win.

If I end up being right I dunno whether to feel clever or depressed. Probably depressed.

[tridim]

3. I think Palin's political career is over.

Locally and nationally.

[EstimatedProphet]

4. Maybe, but that won't go well for McCain if she does

[Ikonoklast]

5. She will be a trivia question by 2010

Her political career is on the same path as the Titanic.

Her feet are just now getting cold and wet.

In two weeks her hat will be floating.

[kenfrequed]

8. I shouldn't be such an Eeyore about it.

I tend to be a catastrophic thinker when it comes to this stuff. It's kind of stupid, really.

I just have trouble believing their campaign could be so infernally stupid.

[Ikonoklast]

9. She is the high water mark of the Christo-Fascists.

It's downhill from here. They are losing traction nation-wide. Flailing around now; the insane blather is getting more extreme by the day from the god-botherers.

Centrist voters of all political stripes are sick of the extremism of the religious right, and Palin/McCain is just now starting to pay the price for that.

I CAN believe they are that stupid. They are running an entire campaign on absolute bullshit, and people are starting to take notice.

[kenfrequed]

10. Yeah

Well I imagine all those prosperity theologians will be replaced with the 'Starvation army' any day now.

The ownership society needs to own up to its mess in Wall street. Any religious spin should be answered with concrete, real world "bread and butter' issures.

[SuperTrouper]

6. She'll be getting out of jail by 2012

[SheilaT]

11. I originally thought she would last only

a week or two and then be off the ticket. I don't think that's going to happen at this point, not unless some genuinely criminal something in her recent past pops up. Which I don't think will happen at this point.

And if McCain loses, as I sincerely hope and trust he will, she'll go back to Alaska where she'll probably get re-elected whenever this term is up, but will then fade away from the political scene. Keep in mind that Sarah Palin is very much an Alaska girl at heart. She grew up there, and even though she went away to college she came back as soon as she graduated. Heck, the real mystery is why she didn't attend the University of Alaska in the first place. For her to be a viable national candidate in four or eight years would require her being out there, travelling around the lower 48, making speeches, rallying for conservative causes, and all sorts of things she's simply not going to do. Her appeal is far too narrow for her to be anything but a flash in the pan. Plus, I doubt she really has a thick enough skin to absorb what gets thrown at a national candidate.

And if Obama wins, which I sincerely hope and trust he will, no Democrat will challenge in in four years, and whoever the Republican candidate is will in reality be a sacrificial lamb that year.