The Unlikeable Palin
Outside of Republicans, she’s not popular at all. According to our NBC/WSJ poll, just 29% view her favorably, compared with 43% who view her unfavorably (not far from George W. Bush’s 29%-50% score). In addition, the poll shows that 52% have problems with a candidate who has been endorsed by Palin, versus only 25% who are comfortable with that attribute. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Palin is more of a political celebrity than a political figure. ~First Read
This is true, but there is nothing here about Palin that we know now that we didn’t already know a year or a year and a half ago. Her unfavorables among non-Republicans have gone up steadily since the Republican convention in 2008, and outside of a dedicated core of admirers and a few critics no one is taking her political chances seriously. This is the same as it has been for a very long time. As Josh Green notes, it would normally be absurd to think that someone with a 14-point favorability deficit was a serious presidential contender, and there aren’t that many non-partisans who think that she is anything of the kind. The reality is that the more independents and Democrats see of Palin, the less they like. In a country where these people make up at least 65% of the electorate, Palin is essentially unelectable in a general election. This isn’t a difficult call to make. The question to which we don’t know the answer yet is whether the GOP is so willfully blind to this reality and so bent on self-destruction in 2012 that the party nominates her anyway. For all of the reasons I have given before, I very much doubt that Republicans are this foolish. It is possible that the GOP will decide to immolate itself as part of an elaborate reality TV experiment, but they have every incentive not to want to do that.
We have good reason to expect that the 2012 Republican field will be large and support will once again be fairly evenly divided. This might give Palin a better chance than she would have otherwise, but many of her likely rivals are going to be going after the same voters who view Palin favorably. For that matter, she is not favorably viewed by all Republicans. That leaves a huge opening for a more credible, electable candidate to pull together some fraction of conservatives together with the primary anti-Palin vote. As it is, she has just 66% favorability with self-identified Tea Party supporters, and she is supposed to be one of their political heroes. If she can’t even consolidate all of the Tea Party’s approximately 18% of the vote, why does anyone think she can win at least a third of the vote in primaries that she will need to get the nomination?
If she did somehow pull it off, Democrats would spend most of the summer and fall of 2012 rubbing their eyes in disbelief at their good fortune. Even in a fairly polarized national electorate where McCain/Palin could manage to get 47% of the vote in the midst of a financial meltdown at the tail end of the second term of one of the three most unpopular postwar Presidents, a ticket headed by Palin would be hard-pressed to break 40%. Palin as the nominee would probably make 2012 the most lopsided election victory for the incumbent President since 1984.
Larison,
1) Her negative rating (43%) in that NBC/WSJ poll is nearly the same as Barack Obama’s (40%). Her positive rating is only 29% because around 30% of the electorate according to that NBC/WSJ poll is neutral or undecided about her. Who’s to say that the 30% who are neutral or undecided about her won’t break her way?
2) 66/12 among tea-party supporters in a CBS poll is actually very good. Once again, you assume that the 22% who are undecided about her will not break her way. In any event, CBS/NY Times uses a different methodology. Mark Blumenthal explains it at the following link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25833884/ns/politics-national_journal/
even putting that aside, you act as if her numbers aren’t as strong among all Republicans as they are among tea party supporters. Pew just found her numbers at 72/21 among all republicans and CNN/Opinion REsearch’s last poll found her at 76/20. PPP found her at 66/19 among Republicans. So she’s polling well among all Republicans, not just Tea Party supporters.
3) What’s the basis for the conclusion that she would not break 40%. Obama led her by 2% in a poll from this April:
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/04/obama-gop-folks-knotted-up.html
I don’t think you understand that the Republicans and Republican-leaning indies who don’t feel she is qualified will vote for her anyway when the alternative is Barack Obama.
There is no clear path for her to break the top two in Iowa or New Hampshire. How do people think she is going to place well in either of those states without making media appearances? What reason do they have to believe she’ll perform better in those media appearances than she has in every other one.
And all this good analysis is static. In the next 18 months, I can barely imagine the number and types of serious-political-candidate mistakes she will make. Fortunately for her, mistakes in a political context are likely gold in an entertainment context. One thing is for certain, she’s going to be rich.
who cares who the Republicans run in 2012. The idea that any Republicans is going to beat Obama in 2012 is laughable. And when one actually looks at the lack of leadership, ability, and charisma, none of them have a chance of beating Obama.
The Republicans are adversely affected by the 20 year push by the Bush clan to limit the develop of other Republicans. Now the Republicans have no real leadership and no next generation.
Before investing current polls with such significance, I suggest taking a look at the last cycle. The Republican front runners were Giuliani and Thompson, right up until the primaries began. Not only did neither of those gentlemen win the nomination, but neither won a single primary or caucus. McCain was usually fourth (behind Romney), in early polling.
Of course this can cut either way for a given candidate. I expect Palin to underperform her polls, like Giuliani and Thompson.
M.Z. Forrest nails it:
How do people think she is going to place well in either of those states without making media appearances? What reason do they have to believe she’ll perform better in those media appearances than she has in every other one.
In Iowa she will be expected to take voters’ questions in unscripted town meetings. Maybe the evangelical vote will give her the win there, if Huckabee doesn’t run. But YouTube and Tina Fey will have a field day every time Putin rears his head under the umbrella of job creation.
I’m not too concerned with what the Tea Party thinks in the first place. The entire movement is plagued by a lack of concrete answers to real issues. Smaller government, bigger military, lower debt is just the beginning of the conversation, and one that should raise eyebrows, if not cause laughter.
Moving on to the critical (but apparently not expected in the context of our current jingoistic, juvenile politics) issue of HOW to make these priorities reality, the Tea Party advocates make sure to keep it simple and stupid by repeating their desires as if no further sensible input is necessary.
In this vein, Palin is the ultimate Tea Party guru. Having never met a geopolitical situation she’s unwilling to throw money, troops and bluster at, all the rest of her rhetoric is a ham-fisted rephrasing of the small government/low taxes mantra. We WANT this. The American people WANT this.
You won’t find Palin detailing what deep sacrifices in entitlements and non-discretionary spending she’s interested in, nor will she elaborate on how she plans these changes without crashing the economy. Of course few who support her expects or is interested in this level of detail or honesty. It doesn’t feel as good as simply mouthing catchphrases and who wants to dwell on the painful reality that governing is hard?
“I don’t think you understand that the Republicans and Republican-leaning indies who don’t feel she is qualified will vote for her anyway when the alternative is Barack Obama.”
When McCain picked Palin in 2008, I threw up my hands in disgust and went on to vote for Obama (which I probably would have done anyway simply because of McCain). If somehow the Republicans were to nominate Palin in 2012, I would simply throw up. Athough I am registered as an independent, I voted for Reagan twice, Bush I twice, Dole once, and Bush II once (2000, not 2004). Any regret that I might have had for voting for Obama in 2008 was dispelled by McCain’s appearance on Meet the Press last week when he made clear that his off-hand comment during the 2008 campaign about our remaining in Afghanistan for 100 years was not a verbal gaffe but, rather, settled policy.
BTW, although registered as an independent in Florida, I was surprised to receive a solicitation mailing from Sharon Angle, the Republican nominee for Senate in Nevada. That tells me who bought TAC’s mailing list. Had the nominee been the woman who proposed paying doctors with chickens, I might have sent a check. We desperately new thinking to curb the high costs of medical care.
Meanwhile in Bizarro-World AKA National Review Online, Kevin Williamson is seriously urging that Palin replace the feckless Steele as head of the RNC. God, I pity lemmings.
ah, so that’s how Sharon Angle got my address. i like how it was addressed to someone she was sure was a republican. if she only knew….
The big money guys who own and operate the Republican Party will never let Palin be nominated.