T. Belman. After posting my last article on Palin I received am email telling me how bad she was. I wrote back and told him that I’ll go toe to toe with him any any allegation he makes regarding her. So he didn’t take me on but resorted to concluding “Regardless, she is unelectable”. Maybe so I said.
This article presents the alternate opinion, that without her no Republican is electable.
By Joseph Sheppard, AMERICAN THINKER
It’s all very simple: the Republicans lost Florida in the 2012 presidential election by 0.88. If conservatives stay at home in 2016 in the same numbers as they did in 2012, then there is no chance of the GOP winning. If conservatives are advised by Governor Palin (unlike in 2012) and Mark Levin to either stay home or vote third-party, then it is impossible to see how Florida could be won by, for example, Jeb Bush.
However, for argument’s sake, if, because of Bush’s Florida connection and a bad economy, Florida is won, then Ohio (-2.98%), Virginia (-3.88%), and Colorado (-5.36%) also have to be roped in. The road to 270 Electoral College votes is extremely difficult under the most optimal of circumstances; utter realism indicates that it is impossible with the slightest bleeding off of actual or potential votes from 2012.
What Ralph Nader did for Al Gore’s hopes in 2000 would be a pinprick compared to the mountain a Republican nominee would face with a conservative base doing a de Blasio back-turn. There is no comparison with Reagan’s 1980 victory, even though there was Republican John Anderson, running as an independent, who got 6.6% of the vote. This is because a Republican won’t win both New York and California, as Reagan did, for the foreseeable future.
If the Republican nominee is an establishment figure, a Bush or a Christie, then he has to face the question of his relationship with Governor Palin. Mitt Romney didn’t have her as part of his campaign or even have her address the Republican Convention (at which she was the star just four years earlier) in 2012. What did that avail him? There is, of course, no way to determine if the millions of potential GOP voters who stayed home might have turned out if Mitt had reached out to Palin and if she had endorsed and campaigned for him subsequently (and vocally). Regardless, they didn’t, and he lost.
At this point in time, things are much more in flux within the GOP than they were in 2012. For perhaps the last time, enough evangelicals and conservatives “held their noses” and voted for Romney for him to improve on John McCain’s 2008 Electoral College performance. Since then, the conservative activists, whose turnout in the 2014 midterms was crucial to the GOP’s landslide, are in no mood for what they see as a RINO Establishment candidate.
If there is any backsliding on amnesty (there are other touchstone issues, but that is the deal-breaker), as the base sees it, that would doubtless be the final straw. What happens then is the big question.
In a party whose conservative elements mounted the biggest challenge to a House Speaker’s re-election since 1923, and whose rank and file are furious with Boehner’s win, the slightest spark could cause a conflagration whose end result is either mass electoral abstention or a total breach. Boehner and the Establishment may win positions by using money, power, and the threat of loss of position on elected representatives, but they have no power whatsoever over whether the rank and file stay home on election day or bolt. If either of these two happen, then the Establishment will have only itself to blame. If in some misguided manner they see this as a medium-term good thing – i.e., they are willing to throw away a presidential election to rid themselves of the “Tea Party Baggage,” they will inflict permanent “Whig Party” damage.
If the rank and file depart, there is no possible way for a rump East Coast Establishment Republican Party in name only to ever win again nationally. For the rank-and-file conservatives, such a fate is a lesser concern. If a truly conservative third party wins conservative state legislatures, where abortion, for example, can be managed along conservative lines, then the Dems can have the presidency in perpetuity. The heartland can get along quite well managing their own affairs (especially as the same-sex marriage laws seem to be cemented in and the presidency has no meaning in relation to them) and blocking leftist presidents in either the House or Senate.
This rump Establishment party is exactly what arch-Establishment figure David Brooks called for in classic elitist tones. “It’s smarter to build a new wing of the Republican Party, one that can compete in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states, in the upper Midwest and along the West Coast. It’s smarter to build a new division that is different the way the Westin is different than [sic] the Sheraton.”
Brooks (and most certainly the “Sheraton Party” is welcome to him – good riddance), as I, sees the utter incompatibility of the two wings, but he sees the two “Republican” parties somehow working together to progress their mutual agendas. That this is impossible is clearly set out by Dylan Byers in discussing Brooks’s concept: “I’m even more skeptical about this ‘coalition of the incompatible.’ That’s what the Republican party is now. If it worked, the factions wouldn’t need to split.”
How real is the threat of Palin or Levin – or, more likely, both, under the circumstances – decamping one way or the other? Very real, if the amnesty situation deteriorates while there is such a “Romney was the last – never again” feeling among conservatives, who are seething at what they see as the betrayal of the “mandate of 2014.” Neither Palin nor Levin has been shy in expressing her or his feelings on the matter.
Levin (December 15): “I am one inch away from leaving the GOP” and, in the nub of the matter, “asking Republicans if they think this is a joke, if they think they can just lie to Republicans and conservatives with impunity about defunding Obamacare and fighting Obama’s illegal amnesty.”
Palin (on illegal aliens, June 16, 2014): “[T]his one issue is driving me to renounce my Republican ties.” Furthermore, “Palin threatens to leave the Republican Party” over amnesty. Palin has mentioned a third party on a number of occasions.
Here is the respected pollster Pat Caddell:
The alienation among Republican voters is so high, that a quarter to one-third of the Republican party are hanging by a thread from bolting.
Caddell was asked, “[D]oes the math show you that there could be an uprising and could the GOP go the way of the Whig Party?”
The GOP leadership, the lawyers, the lobbyists, the consultant class of the Republican party, and all the big donors don’t understand that these people are angry. … They are saying that John Boehner doesn’t care about them, and all he cares about is the special interests. I’ve never seen anything like this in the base of a party. And that is why the analogy to the Whigs is not so far-fetched.
The Establishment can take up the left’s mantra that Palin is irrelevant – or, as Robert Costa advised, “Palin is diminished” – but her 91% endorsement success in the 2012 midterms belies such nonsense. Palin’s endorsement is the prize desperately sought after and the key to success for the likes of Cruz, Fischer, Haley, and many others. If she asked her millions of followers to follow her out of the GOP, or indicated to them that they would be better off fishing on election day, the effect on the presidential campaign would be massive. If Levin’s huge listener audience (And who knows? Limbaugh might join in.) were also advised of either path, then it would be foolish to imagine that the few states that the GOP desperately needs to have any chance of victory – and the loss of just one would end their hopes – would not be put out of reach.
The ball is in the Establishment’s court – not Palin’s or Levin’s. If the Establishment chooses to betray the voters who gave them control of Congress, and chooses to support Obama’s amnesty agenda and other liberal policies, then when, not if, the rupture comes, it will be the Establishment’s doing.
I wrote that possibly the GOP’s best and only chance would be a Palin/Bush (in any combination) ticket, as that would be the only way to heal the breech and keep the party together. A true conservative Virginia gentleman and strong Palin supporter advised that he is against that “because it is the only thing that will save the GOP, and it is beyond saving.”
Such is the plight the Establishment has visited on the party. They will pay the price if it goes the way of the Whigs. Perhaps the old gentleman is right.
AMERICAN THINKER ADVISES:
The truth about Sarah Palin and independent voters
All elections will be decided not by party members and stalwart but by the majority called independents.. I think any ticket that Palin is on or mostly supports would lose the political middle the majority of independent voters.
Palin’s appeal is to narrow she would IMO lose more votes than she brings in.
If you want a guaranteed loss put palin on a ticket…Bush is also a loser. I’m starting to like Gov Perry and even Huckabee both have walked the walk wrt Israel.
Registered democrats outnumber republicans by 2to1 that means the republicans need to turn out the vote to counter the larger Dem party.
Time to have party conventions select their candidates. Skip the primary system a waste of time and billions of dollars.
Outlaw political packs and narrow by law campaining time to 6 weeks Max.
Remove corporate and NGO tax deduction for political donations.
This country is suffering under the “two party system”. This is the crisis for the Republican party. But this is by chance only. The Democrats face the same threat.
To complete the destruction to the fake “conservative” versus “liberal” debate is very simple. Make it a federal crime to collect party affiliation for purposes of voter registration. This would make it impossible for political parties to confuse their internal politics with the general politics of electing public officials. There would be no more political primaries anywhere. Political parties would be forced on their own internal resources to determine who the political party submits as a nominee for an election.
We are already seeing the collapse of this system here in California where you can register to vote without submitting a party affiliation. You can leave your political party without having to join some other political party. The response from our corrupt elected officials is to institute ballots with a “party of preference” in the elections. Political parties have been displaced as having a role in submitting a nominee at all, in a gross violation of the civil rights of political parties. The Republicans of California suffer the most, despite that we complete silence from them. They could sue the state and win back their rights.