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| "Oh hell no, I'm not jumping in! I'm just screwing with you people!" |
The safe bet remains that Sarah Palin is simply engaged in a long and tiresome tease. Every few weeks comes some new sign of her supposedly imminent entry into the GOP presidential race, but nothing ever seems to happen.
For the latest flurry of speculation, we can thank Karl Rove, who used several television appearances last weekend to argue that "I think she gets in" and to suggest that Palin's scheduled appearance at a Sept. 3 Tea Party event in Iowa might double as a campaign launch. Like each one that's come before it, chances are that this eruption will soon die down without amounting to anything. Rove may just have been trying to spoil the campaign rollout of his old nemesis, Rick Perry, and Palin is now tamping down the speculation.
Which is sort of a shame. Because if you're tired of all of this, and if you're tired of all of the media oxygen that the former half-term Alaska governor still manages to consume, then you really should be hoping that Palin actually does get into the race: It may be the best way of making her disappear for good.
Why? Because a presidential campaign would almost certainly end in defeat for Palin. And not just any kind of defeat -- epic, humiliating defeat, the sort of disaster that might once and for all convince the political and media worlds that the empress has no clothes.
If she jumped in, polls would initially show her in contention, but she'd be running a structure- and discipline-free campaign with no support from GOP opinion-shapers and on a message that really isn't unique. Republican voters who haven't yet figured it out would realize she's not a viable option and abandon her for a candidate who seems to have a better chance. If she were to then suffer humiliating defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, Palin might suddenly find that the media isn't nearly as interested in her every tweet and Facebook post as it once was.
In other words, those who just want her to go away should consider a Palin presidential campaign an investment: You'd have to deal with a few weeks (or maybe even months) of saturation coverage, but there'd be a good chance it would all end with Palin's presence in our lives severely and permanently diminished.
Brilliant! This is EXACTLY what I have been thinking for quite some time now.
I do not give Ms. Palin too much credit for her intelligence, but I DO believe she has good instincts when it comes to keeping her brand alive and understanding the reality of her limitations.
Sister Sarah KNOWS she cannot stand on the stage and debate the other GOP hopefuls. And she knows that doing so will reveal her complete lack of knowledge about the things a President needs to know, and forever remove her ability to bullshit her followers into thinking she has what it takes to do that job.
And once the political fantasies of the Palin-bots have been crushed under the heavy heel of reality, why would they pay ANY attention to her ever again?
Essentially, just like this article states, Palin would be "permanently diminished," in a way that perhaps even Joe, or Levi, or Fred's books could never fully accomplish. Remember this would be MILLIONS of Americans watching her grasping for facts, failing to adequately understand the question, and sweating like a Sumo wrestler while her whole world crumbled around her.
It might make for some of the most compelling political theater we have seen in decades, but it is VERY unlikely to EVER happen.
