2012: President Palin?

We’ve all been thinking about it. With Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee and (hopefully) the Vice President of the United States in 2008, it would only be a matter of time before Governor Palin herself was on the top of the ticket.

“Palin for President 2012″ is a blog that says it is starting a movement to elect Sarah Palin the President in 2012. There’s not much on the website or blog yet but I will be closely monitoring the site. Any friend of Sarah Palin’s is a friend of ours. Sign me up!

You can find their blog here, and if you know any other websites/groups/blogs that want to elect Palin the President in 2012, leave a comment and I’ll add them to the blogroll at right on the page P4A: Palin 2012.

Sarah Palin vs. Hillary Clinton: the True Battle?

The New York Times has an interesting hypothesis: that the true battle this fall could very well be Sarah Palin vs. Hillary Clinton. 

This raises an interesting question for Hillary Clinton. Does she want to work very hard to elect Barack Obama? On the chance (however slight) that he doesn’t make a complete disaster out of his presidency, Hillary will be another 4 years away from running for President. But on the other hand, if Obama utterly fails and ends up damaging the nation even more, Hillary will be one of the people who put him there. There’s only so much that saying “I told you so” can help.

But to make matters more complicated for her ambitions, if Hillary doesn’t break her back to elect Obama and he loses, the far-leftists who make up Obama’s base won’t lift a finger to elect her in 2012. It’s a very interesting conondrum in an election where white working women (or “Wal-Mart moms” as Democrats condescendingly refer to them) could swing certain battleground states. 

But the true danger, I think, is Barack Obama running against Sarah Palin. The reasons for this are twofold: because it raises Governor Palin to an even higher level; and because more people find Sarah Palin favorable than find Obama or McCain or Biden favorable. The more people learn about Sarah Palin, the more they seem to like her (unless they’re liberals). If he tries to go after her, even if she goes after him, it will backfire–we’ve seen this already in the past week. I could go on for days about how people only find Governor Palin’s attacks on Obama’s smug self-worship to reaffirm their distaste for his antics, but that’s for another post. The long and short of it is that the usual tricks aren’t going to work against Governor Palin. 

But can Obama trust the Clintons to try to move against her, given the way he threw Hillary under the bus?

Governor Palin’s Speech Gets 37.2 Million Views

According to THR.com, Governor Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention pulled in 37.2 million views.

Barack Obama’s speech (one week ago today), Barack Obama delivered a speech that brought in 38.4 million views.

One wonders if the media will spin this as ‘people just trying to get to know her’ after the adulation that the Obamessiah got last week for his huge number of viewers. When it comes right down to it, that this unknown politician earned so many views even without the 12-month hype that Obama has received is pretty impressive.

A Nation Waits

Fox News reports that Governor Palin’s motorcade (she has her own motorcade–I’m so proud) is en route to the convention center. I’m waiting with baited breath for Governor Palin to take to the podium. This will likely be my last update before the speech (and I won’t likely be updating during the speech) so if you want to share your comments on the speech, please do so.

Good Commentary in the Post Intelligencer

The Seattle Post Intelligencer had a good article on the Bristol Palin media craze, which you can read in full here. While I don’t necessarily agree with her characterization of the switch in liberal and conservative roles, the columnist Monica Guzman cuts through the nonsense to the real issue: that Bristol Palin doesn’t matter to this election.

You can find the link to the article above but I found the following excerpts to be valuable:

If there’s a lesson here, it’s that liberals and conservatives are defined not so much by their dogma as by their need to use their differences against each other.

The debate about Bristol Palin isn’t really about Bristol Palin. It isn’t even about teenage pregnancy. The most angry exchanges in this conversation are about political consistency.

Most relevant, I think, is her plea that Republicans and Democrats put aside their partisanship for the greater good–and to finally put to death the inane arguments about flip-flopping. “I don’t often quote dead writers. But Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote something that’s changed the way I look at politics: “A foolish consistency is the hobgobblin of little minds.”"

Amen to that, Monica. Thanks for the perspective.

Sarah Palin, Reigning Queen of the Internet

Who was the most searched-about figure on the Internet last week? Why, Governor Sarah Palin of course. In addition to being a political outsider and relatively unknown outside of Alaska, the search terms indicate that John McCain’s runningmate is more than just a candidate: she’s a phenomenon.

TIME had an article on on this, which you can find here.

Keep Sarah Palin at the head of the game: google Sarah Palin!

Obama’s Executive Experience

According to a post at Fox News’ Election HQ that quotes Senator Obama, the Senator thinks that running for President qualifies him to be President.

Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years

-Barack Obama

If we’re going by experience, then, doesn’t that mean that McCain’s decades of experience, plus running for President, outstrip Obama’s experience?

All other issues aside, I’m not sure that having a president who claims ‘running for president’ as executive experience is such a good idea. Senator Obama, you should fire whoever gave you that talking point.

But while Barack Obama was running for president (and purportedly gaining all this magnificent experience), Sarah Palin was working for the people who elected her. In 2007, while Obama was making the rounds to benefit his candidacy, Governor Palin was tending to a state of emergency in Alaska. In 2008, while Obama was raging against McCain with misleading statistics, Governor Palin was helping to manage an emergency situation in Alaska.

Which experience would you trust?

Did you know…

A few important facts about Governor Sarah Palin, courtesy of Sarah Palin Facts:

“Sarah Palin is the reason compasses point North.”

“Sarah Palin can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves!”

“Sarah Palin was not flown to Ohio in charter jet- she ran as part of morning workout.”

“Sarah Palin uses French Canadians as bait to catch giant king salmon.”

“Sarah Palin knows how old the Chinese gymnasts are.”

Check out the website (it’s also linked in the blogroll to the right). If you have a favorite Palin-oriented blog, or write a Palin-oriented blog yourself, leave a comment if you’d like to be included in the links.