John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
We'll find out over the weekend, but he's predicting that Sarah Palin will not only not announce her own candidacy for the Presidency, but will endorse Rick Perry's.
Sarah Palin is only 47 years old, a full 15 years younger than Hillary Clinton was when she ran in 2008 and more than two decades younger than Ronald Reagan was when he mounted his successful campaign for president. She knows she has small children to raise and that her own mistakes and relentless media hostility have damaged her brand as a presidential candidate. But she also knows that attention spans are short, America is full of political careers that have been resurrected and she has lots of time to outwait her critics.
Let’s also take Sarah Palin at her word. Last year, she told Greta van Susteran of Fox News that the major reason she might run would be “if nobody else were to step up with the solutions that are needed” to set the country right. “But I also know that anybody – anybody – can make a huge difference in this country, without a title, without an office, just being out there as an advocate for solutions that can work to get the country on the right track. And that’s where I am now.” Doesn’t that pretty much describe what Sarah Palin has been doing the last year, fueled with celebrity-infused brio?
So if Sarah Palin isn’t running for president, what will she do in 2012? Even as a non-candidate she has the potential to shake up the GOP race. In a recent slickly-produced video producer by Team Palin that chronicles her bus tour of Iowa, Palin shakes hands with a girl in an “Americans for Rick Perry” T-shirt and then poses for a photo with the girl and her fellow Perry supporters.
“Given the elaborate editing that went into this production, is it likely that Palin would have approved a visual nod to Perry as a mere coincidence?” asks blogger Robert Stacy McCain, a keen-eyed Palin watcher. “I don’t think so.”
Indeed, Republican governors tell me that while Palin and Perry attended meetings as fellow governors from 2007 to 2009, they clearly bonded. “As executives of the two biggest energy-producing states in the country they had a lot in common and were simpatico on issues,” one governor told me last week. “You could also say they are both larger-than-life personalities who no doubt learned from each other in the publicity department.”
Rick Perry has already vaunted – at least temporarily – to the front of the GOP presidential pack, leading Mitt Romney by 29% to 22% in the latest Fox News poll that has Palin at 8%. If Sarah Palin decides that 2012 isn’t her year to run, as I firmly believe is the case, but even sweeter revenge could she have on her media adversaries than to give early backing to a kindred conservative spirit who then went on to win the GOP nomination and indeed the presidency?
That’s why I believe Sarah Palin isn’t running, and why she will ultimately endorse Rick Perry. And if her bet pays off and Perry becomes president, don’t be surprised if the next Secretary of Energy is a certain former Alaska governor who has an aggressive agenda to open up America’s energy resources. Such a platform would also be an effective launching pad for her to start refurbishing her political and policy image.
I am envisioning a bumper-sticker with just a pair of fashionable women's eyeglasses and the words: "Palin - 20/20".
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Apr '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
I like that bumper sticker.
May '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
John Fund has obviously been reading my posts on Ricochet. In a few weeks he will announce that the ticket will be Perry/ Kevin McCarthy.
Jun '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Great analysis by one of our greatest columnists, John Fund. I love reading him and listening to him in interviews.
That is genius -- I, too, really like that bumper sticker.
Jun '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
I think you might be right. Or it's just in the zeitgeist. I hope he gives you credit, though -- it's only fair.
Aug '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Her delay in deciding about running have also caused some of her supporters to drift away. She polls only 8% among Republicans in the latest Fox News poll. Surely, her support would climb if she actually entered the race but she faces another obstacle. Many Republicans just don't believe she is qualified to be president or think she is damaged goods in a general election. The Fox poll found a full 71% of Republicans and 66% of Tea Party supporters don’t want her to run.
I read it this morning and thought this paragraph alone would make some heads explode around here.
I'm happy to learn I was wrong about that.
Edited on September 3, 2011 at 7:05pmMar '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Spot on. It's been apparent for some time that she has no intention of entering the contest but has instead been setting herself up to take the role of kingmaker. I imagine her endorsement would be such a boost for Perry that he would become the unequivocal front runner.
May '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
I think Fund may have set the price of a Palin endorsement too low. I'm thinking Secretary of State.
Dec '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
So much for his prediction: "Polls,” Palin said, “are for strippers and cross country skiers."
I haven't watched it, yet, as I am pre-loading it over a slow, wireless connection. However, she doesn't appear to backing out or backing others, from what I have skimmed.'
Jun '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Secretary of Energy is a plausible cabinet position for Palin. Drill, Sarah, Drill.
Jul '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Squishy Blue RINO: Her delay in deciding about running have also caused some of her supporters to drift away. She polls only 8% among Republicans in the latest Fox News poll. Surely, her support would climb if she actually entered the race but she faces another obstacle. Many Republicans just don't believe she is qualified to be president or think she is damaged goods in a general election. The Fox poll found a full 71% of Republicans and 66% of Tea Party supporters don’t want her to run.
I read it this morning and thought this paragraph alone would make some heads explode around here.
I'm happy to learn I was wrong about that.
I don't want her to run until she has proven she will complete a term in a major office. I respect what she stands for, but she was the victim of a preposterously bad McCain campaign and her own inexperience with the national spotlight. As a reformer, she has unfinished business with the Murkowski machine in Alaska.
Her principles are not entirely unrepresented in the current in the current contenders.
Apr '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
What nonsense. She said today:
"I’ve seen this kind of crony capitalism before … I took on a corrupt and compromised political class and their backroom dealings with Big Oil. And I can tell you that sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched power brokers.”
“Politicians are so focused on the symptoms and not the disease … so this is why we must remember that the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012, but the challenge is who or what we will replace him with.”
“Don’t wait for the permanent political class to reform anything for you. They won’t. They can’t. They can’t even take responsibility for their own actions.”
From where in the present GOP field are we going to get "sudden and relentless reform"?
More to come on Monday where she is speaking - who would have guessed it reading John Fund - in New Hampshire.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/03/palin_sends_shot_across_gop_fields_bow_in_fiery_iowa_speech__111202.html
Aug '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Such an announcement would also have the added benefit of causing instantaneous aneurysms on the left. I'm in favor.
Aug '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Squishy Blue RINO: The Fox poll found a full 71% of Republicans and 66% of Tea Party supporters don’t want her to run.
I read it this morning and thought this paragraph alone would make some heads explode around here.
I'm happy to learn I was wrong about that.
I have a feeling that had Rick Perry not entered the race, those numbers would have been lower.
Apr '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
The notion of 'Drill, baby, drill' Palindrome serving as Energy Secretary in a Rick Perry administration (2 governors of the nation's leading energy-producing states) makes my mouth water. The only thing missing in order to produce a complete and utter meltdown on the left would be somehow to clone her so she could be Health & Human Services Secretary at the same time.
Dec '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
This woman is running for President; sorry if that doesn't work, but it was an embed code that I tried to clean up.
I get everybody else's concerns, but they do not impact me, beyond being uncomfortable with making you uncomfortable. I don't really care what you think, because most group-think got us to where we are today. But I hate to make you needlessly uncomfortable. I try to be a nice person.
In the meantime, regardless of how this is spun by others, I saw somebody that is not playing for king-maker, but that is going to run.
In my personal opinion, she will kick Olberman, if she runs. She is just getting practice, right now. There is no other GOP candidate that has her direct and calculated cojones. And there is no GOP candidate without cojones that I will vote for. Ann Coulter can pine for Christie and the rest can settle for Romney, but, in the primary, I will vote for this gal, because even Perry is a dolt and a whimp, next to her practiced and researched thoughtfullness.
I'll still vote for your RINO in the general.
Jul '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Department of Energy? Health and Human Services? Those, and many other departments, need to be closed.
Cut, baby, cut.
Jul '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
My favorite snippet: "Obama's bullet train to bankruptcy."
Aug '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Jimmy Carter: Department of Energy? Health and Human Services? Those, and many other departments, need to be closed.
Cut, baby, cut. · Sep 3 at 4:34pm
Put Sarah in charge of closing all of the above. That would make it a new American Pastime, after all we lead the world. Let's lead'em into the light.
Sep '11
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
Coolio! My first comment as a Ricochet subscriber, been meaning to sign up for a while and have finally pulled the trigger.
Anyhow, Dept of Eneregy would be great place for Palin to rehab her image and establish her bonifides(her performance as Gov of AK should suffice, but the MSM did their self-appointed job rather effectively) which as Fund alluded to will take some time. My only(at this time)addition to a Perry cabinet would be Bolton for Secy of State.
The scale of collectivist exploding heads of the Palin & Bolton confirmation hearings alone should rightly put the AGW arguement to rest. If the magnitude of those detonations fails to raise the planetary temperature average, then nothing will.
Jul '10
Re: John Fund is Right About Sarah Palin
flownover Put Sarah in charge of closing all of the above. That would make it a new American Pastime, after all we lead the world. Let's lead'em into the light. · Sep 3 at 5:25pm
What's the opposite of "blue ribbon panel[?]" "Mama Grizzly[?]"