It's Palin time: Chris Bodenner over at the Daily Dish goes to town on the Palin family and gender roles, knocking down Bristol's ghostwriter in the process.
By the way...it's just a wild guess, with nothing to go on, but my latest tea-leaf reading is that it's more likely than not that Sarah Palin will still mount some kind of presidential campaign later this year. It might just be on the scale of her recent bus tour, or something like the Donald Trump "campaign" from back in the spring, or even a full-fledged campaign that winds up with her competing in Iowa and on to more, but I guess I'll be surprised if she just skips out on the whole thing. I mean, if Jon Huntsman can convince himself that he has a chance to win, surely Palin must really believe that she has chance. She certainly seems to like the attention.
The flip side is that her financial situation might really make it very difficult, or very costly, to mount a formal campaign -- but surely everything short of that helps her make more money, if that's her goal.
And, yeah, I still think she's a plausible nominee, although a less likely one than she was twelve or six or even two months ago. A longshot, but plausible. There's still no one in the field in the same league with her when it comes to resentment, and I've always believed that one should never bet against resentment in GOP nomination contests.
Back to Bodenner: Nice catch!
>I mean, if Jon Huntsman can convince himself that he has a chance to win, surely Palin must really believe that she has chance. She certainly seems to like the attention.
ReplyDeleteOne difference, however, is that Huntsman is running a relatively traditional campaign. I suspect Palin is turned off by the things she would have to do if she entered and really intended to win. She may be delusional, but I think even she realizes she can't nab the nomination through media-trolling alone, which is just about all she seems interested in doing at this point.
Kylopod, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteI really think she might think that she could do the whole thing without campaigning.
Honestly, I think she actually believes the crap that comes out of her mouth. Her capacity for self-delusion seems endless to me.
This isn't 1936 anymore, a candidate can't just position themselves to get "drafted" into the nomination at a convention. Ever since the 80's (or so) presidential nominations have been determined by a series of primary contests.
ReplyDeleteAnyone seriously pursuing a nomination needs to build a professional, national campaign organization, and I'm somewhat skeptical that even a Rick Perry could pull that off if he dithers until Labor Day. (Jeb Bush, maybe - the family has all the institutional contacts to pull together a last-minute run. But Jeb ain't walkin' through that door.)
Without the organization in place, a candidate would be extremely hard pressed to take advantage of IA-NH-SC/NV primary victories.
Palin will certainly do more bus tours to try and drum up business, but she'll never go so far as to endanger her FOX talking head money. I don't think she's plausible at this stage, it would mean she'd need to do a 180 on 'things serious candidates do' from her current positioning as 'sideline bomb thrower'.