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Palin Is Still Going Nowhere

Jonathan Chait makes sense when he says that O’Donnell’s Senate campaign is a dry run for Palin’s presidential bid. What I don’t understand is how he squares this with the argument that Palin is now the front-runner for 2012. It seems that Palin wants to run, and she seems to be positioning herself to start […]

Jonathan Chait makes sense when he says that O’Donnell’s Senate campaign is a dry run for Palin’s presidential bid. What I don’t understand is how he squares this with the argument that Palin is now the front-runner for 2012. It seems that Palin wants to run, and she seems to be positioning herself to start doing that, but it is a leap to get from there to concluding that she is the front-runner. There would need to be some evidence that she is at least one of the top two preferred candidates in the relevant caucus and primary states. We would need to see proof that some plurality of Republicans nationally would support her candidacy. As of now, according to every measure normally used in determining such things, Romney is the front-runner in terms of money, organization, and name recognition, and on top of all that it is now “his turn.” For the thousandth time, Republicans almost never nominate insurgents. Palin would insist on being seen as an anti-establishment insurgent, and in some crucial respects that is exactly what she would be, which is also why she couldn’t win the nomination.

If O’Donnell’s Senate campaign is a dry run, surely what that means is that a Republican Party that wants to defeat or at least seriously compete against Obama must under no circumstances nominate a presidential candidate similar to Christine O’Donnell. That means that Palin is a “front-runner” in the same way that Giuliani was considered a major presidential candidate throughout much of 2007: it is something that journalists and pundits say to one another and tell their audiences, and it has nothing to do with political reality. Assuming that O’Donnell is going to lose in a blowout to Coons, which is what virtually everyone assumes, the “dry run” in Delaware will be an example every Palin critic and opponent can point to from this November until the start of the Iowa caucuses.

The basic argument against O’Donnell can be made against Palin: outside the bubble of her devoted followers, very few people like her, and even fewer believe she is qualified for the office. The main difference is that Palin has a slightly larger bubble, but even this bubble doesn’t include most of the GOP. As Ross suggested yesterday, Delaware could be a reality check and a cautionary tale about “ideological purism,” and most attentive and savvy voters (which is what a lot of early primary voters are) will see it that way. Defeating an incumbent President is difficult. There’s a reason that it has only happened four times in the last century. If Republicans want to have a chance, they will nominate someone other than Palin, and if there is one thing that is obvious from the last two years it is that most Republicans are desperate to have a realistic chance of defeating Obama.

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