Sarah Palin vs. the GOP

Despite her enduring popularity with the GOP base, “Republicans facing tough elections in 2010 don’t want Sarah Palin campaigning with them,” said Molly K. Hooper in The Hill. To gain seats, the GOP has to win in districts that President Obama took in 2008. Well, Obama is a “frequent target of Palin’s criticism,” and her “help” in these areas would likely fire up Democrats more than it would GOP voters. She can help, they say, “by staying home in Wasilla.”

“Typical Republicowards,” said Dan Riehl in Riehl World View. Not all Republicans in Congress are “Scaredy-crats,” of course—Chuck Grassley and Roy Blunt are “principled” enough conservatives to welcome Palin’s help—but it’s time to clear the party of the “weak-kneed, big government Republicrats” who would shun Palin.

What the Republican Party needs is “conservative leaders who know how to think,” said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, and that emphatically excludes Palin. If her GOP apologists keep believing their serial “Palin myths”—that the “elites” hate her, the “media did her in,” her poor treatment is due to her social class, she can learn how to think—Republicans shouldn’t be treated as “a grown-up, responsible party, a party that deserves to lead.”

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Who else do the Republicans have? said David Frum in The Week. Palin should be out of the running, because Americans "adore” but don’t vote for “irresponsible, flashy celebrities.” But Republicans “rarely reach into their second tier for national leadership”—sorry Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty—and they tend to favor orderly succession. That pretty much leaves 2008 runner-up Mitt Romney.

Don’t be so quick to dismiss Palin, said Jay Newton-Small in Time. While she’s lost ground with Democrats and independents since her surprise resignation, it’s “actually given her a bump amongst GOP voters.” And Republican primary voters are the only people she has to please for 2012.