The more Palin can convince independent voters to align themselves with the frontier ethos, as opposed to the technocratic model associated with Obama that promises competence but may not always deliver on it, the more powerful this message will get.

But the frontier may represent a more powerful meme in the coming decade for yesterday’s frontier is today’s and tomorrow’s exurbs, a place where middle class Americans escape crowded cities and suburbs to better their lots in life. These voters don’t want government to get in the way of their economic aspirations but also want government to ensure that they wont’ be, for lack of a better term, “screwed” by corporations that can sometimes be just as stifling as an oppressive government. Call them Tea Partiers. Or cloth-coat conservatives. Or Reagan Democrats. Or voters who call themselves conservative and not Republican. These voters and those who identify with this spirit have swung every election since 1980. ~Tony Lee

Via Andrew

Lee’s case for Palin is typical of the genre in that it never explains why the actual Sarah Palin will prove to be such a formidable political force. Instead, he weaves a story about an imaginary Palin who will somehow rally disaffected independent voters and become a transformative political figure. The actual Palin is aggressively ideological and obnoxiously partisan, which is very satisfying to most ideologues and partisans, but this is exactly what people outside the Palinite bubble dislike about her. Palin is far too irrelevant to the 2012 race to pay so much attention to her, but it might be worth revisiting once more why it is that she is so irrelevant.

Lee argues for this despite all the evidence that very few people outside the GOP and conservative movement regard her favorably, and he enthuses over Palin’s “genius” without demonstrating how this supposed genius translates into political success. For every endorsement of a Rand Paul that puts her on the side of a likely winning candidate, she has a few dubious endorsements of candidates who may not even win in their primary races (e.g., Fiorina in California and Martinez in New Mexico). Lee seems to know throughout that the transformative Palin he praises does not exist right now, but nonetheless rehearses all the arguments we have heard for almost two years for why she represents a future political juggernaut. She is feisty and unapologetic. She is optimistic and she is “one of us,” and she enjoys mocking the other side! It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of charisma and identity in democratic politics, but it is equally misguided to make charisma and identity into the only things that matter. However, this is what Palin admirers and supporters are reduced to doing, because there is nothing else to say in her favor. What is so striking about this piece is that it says nothing that Palin fans have not said a dozen times before.

It’s important to identify correctly who Lee’s independent voters are. On the whole, they are not Tea Partiers. There are independents who identify with the Tea Party movement, but they do not represent most independents. These are for the most part independents who are not “true” independents but are reliably right-leaning, Republican-voting independents. This is that part of the electorate that refuses to call itself Republican but almost always votes for Republican candidates at most or all levels. Most who identify with the Tea Party movement also identify as Republicans. Most of them are reliable partisans. They are significantly different from Reagan Democrat voters in their ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, and politically they are to the right of swing voters. These are the people who overwhelmingly view Palin favorably, and in this as in other things they are very unrepresentative of the rest of the country.

Palin admirers have the strangest habit of finding new and demeaning ways to insult the object of their admiration. Here is Lee again:

In attacking Obama, conservatives get the sense that Palin is punching fearlessly up in her weight class and they find her more endearing because of it [bold mine-DL].

In other words, everyone including her admirers acknowledges that Palin is outclassed by Obama in every area of actual policy knowledge and understanding, but her admirers like that she doesn’t let this get in the way of launching her attacks. She may be a lightweight, but at least she punches above her weight! She is completely out of her depth, but she’s scrappy! This is supposed to be a compliment? Palin’s fans almost universally view Obama as an inexperienced incompetent, yet they routinely compare her to him when confronting the problem that she is less experienced and less knowledgeable than he was three years ago. It can’t be a good sign when even her fans basically hold her in such contempt.

Lee also makes the mistake of confusing profound contempt for Palin for fear of her. Palin is extremely useful to many media outlets regardless of their ideological leanings, because she generates controversy and strong feelings and therefore drives ratings. The left doesn’t view her as much of a threat, but rather they see her rise to prominence on the right as an unparalleled opportunity to discredit their opponents in the eyes of the public. So she is treated as an invaluable instrument in painting the GOP as a party defined and led by someone like her.

Obama and his advisors have not treated potential future 2012 rivals with scorn and dismissive contempt. On the contrary, they have gone out of their way to bind potential rivals to Obama to make it impossible for them to make credible challenges to him in the next election. One need only look at how respectfully they handled Huntsman last year to see how the administration responds to potential political threats for 2012. Obama and his supporters would probably like nothing better than to have Palin as a general election opponent.

Re-election is not guaranteed for sitting Presidents, but a Palin nomination would give Obama an enormous advantage for the entire election. However, everything we have seen so far tells us that most Republican primary voters, activists and party insiders are not going to cooperate, and Palin seems to be doing none of the organizational and fundraising things future presidential candidates. When even the people who like her do not take her seriously, we can safely say that she has no future as a successful national political candidate. Can we please stop talking about her now?