Oh good, thanks to Politico, we can move on past the midterms and start discussing the next presidential elections:
The establishment-vs.-activists narrative is hardly novel in presidential primaries. What’s different this time is that the anti-establishment candidate — Palin — would enter with unmatched celebrity and media advantages, at a time when the establishment is weaker than it’s been in many years.
There are a bunch of Republicans who thought Sarah Palin and the whole Tea Party thing was kind of cute but want no part of them once Tuesday’s elections are over. They’re falling over each other to give anonymous quotes to Politico reporters. Unfortunately for them, they now realize that they’ll have difficulty in beating her in the Republicans primaries and caucuses.
Me? I don’t think she has the work ethic to run a long campaign. But that’s really the only reason I think she can’t win the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. If she did somehow win one or both of those, she’d probably roll to the nomination. The Republican base is totally insane.
We’re about to enter into the most poisonous political climate that this country has endured since the fight for full equality for blacks in the 1960’s. The electorate is going to absolutely HATE what they get out of the next Congress, and they’ll be none too pleased with the Establishment.
Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin.
They’re going off the rails on a crazy train. It may ride them through to ownership of the House, but it ain’t coming smoothly into the station in November 2012. Our challenge for the next two years is going to be almost entirely about making sure that Sarah Palin and the influx of new Republican scoundrels get their fair share of the blame for the absolute mess in Washington.
Yes, and our job is also to make sure the Democrats do a better job of being able to persuasively argue that they are working to change the establishment rather than simply being part of it. One silver lining of whatever losses we have on Tuesday is that they will likely be among the Blue Dogs. I won’t like having less Democrats around, but at least getting rid of some Blue Dogs will help us have a more consistent progressive message to sell.
The most important thing will be to have Obama’s back — because absolutely everything that happens will be “Obama’s fault” just as everything from 1994-2000 was Clinton’s fault, and the Congressional Democrats will pile on just a gleefully as the Republicans.
The largest Democratic caucus in Congress isn’t the Progressive Caucus, or the Black Caucus, or the Blue Dogs.
It’s the “Ur doin it wrong” Caucus.
Lol, idiots. I wonder when they came to these conclusions.
I suspect David Frum is correct when he says this augurs the rise of the “Draft Jeb” movement.
I agree with you on the work ethic, but on top of that I recall all those straw polls last year that she didn’t even place in, or barely so. I don’t think she has nearly the full party support that she’d need to pull off a single primary.
And when you factor in what it takes to bag Iowa and NH–and granted she’s shown that she’s capable of making 3-4 appearances in a single day, as long as there’s a paycheck in it–no way do I see it happening.
We’d have to see a successful super-amplification of the teabagger strategy to hold no press conferences, answer no questions, etc, on a presidential level before Palin could even get the GOP nom.