The single most disturbing thing for me (as a supporter of the GOP)
about the outcome of the US elections wasn’t the election of Barack Obama or an almost filibuster proof
Senate; the fact that some people are now saying ‘Sarah in 2012’ has made me nauseous on more than one occasion since McCain’s concession speech.
Now, some readers might spot my strategic illogic here. They will say ‘put whoever you want up against Barack for his incumbent re-election, your candidate won’t win anyway.’ Probably right, I would peg Obama for a two-termer, but things, as Jimmy Carter found out, happen sometimes to derail incumbencies.
The danger is that the GOP ends up ‘doing an IDS’, selecting a dogged and determined rightist leader to shore up the base, allowing Biden or some other Dem starlet to rise to prominence in a triumphant re-election where Obama has kudos to share, thereby becoming the heir apparent.
The GOP needs to be sensible, not cutting off its proverbial nose to spite it’s proverbial face. Putting a lunatic like Sarah Palin against an incumbent Obama presidency (assuming a very basic competence in the next three years) is essentially willing another four years of Democrat hegemony. No matter how much the nutters in the GOP hierarchy might hate the electorate now, it seems unlikely they’ll stoop all the way to cruel and unusual punishment.
Whether or not she was effective in shoring up a wavering grassroots for McCain, she has as much chance of capturing the middle ground as I have of winning Miss Wasilla.
It beggars belief that anyone’s seriously considering it. Strange days indeed.
