Sarah Palin: She’ll be back

Shed no tears for Sarah Heath Palin, said John Heilemann in New York. Alaska’s telegenic governor will not be our next vice president, but this week’s defeat has cleared her way to a bigger prize. Palin’s sudden, surprise emergence onto the national stage “electrified the Republican grass roots as no candidate has in years,” and left many evangelicals and rural conservatives convinced that she’s the “next-generation XX-chromosome Ronald Reagan” who can lead them to victory in 2012. Palin has her detractors even within the party, said Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard. But once the dust has settled from 2008, and the GOP searches for a nominee with the “middle-class magnetism” to win a general election, they may come to realize “the enormous asset they have in Palin.” As a serious Christian, mother of five, and “fearless slayer of (male) political bigwigs,” she has convinced heartland conservatives that she’s “one of them.”

There’s no disputing Sarah Palin’s “rock star quality,” said Jerry Zremski in The Buffalo News. The problem is that she’s a rock star in the mold of “Pat Benatar—popular with her fans, but not with a legion of critics.” Beneath the charisma, said Peter Beinart in The Washington Post, Palin’s “brand is culture war.” She preaches the us-against-them mentality of the Republican base, not the kind of message that wins you a national majority. In the campaign just ended, Palin’s divisiveness cost McCain votes with moderates and independents, perhaps even the election itself. In 2012, Palin’s tribalism will be an even tougher sell to a nation that’s turned its back on the rancor and nastiness of the Clinton and Bush years. Some desperate Republicans may look at Palin and see the future, but the rest of us see a creature of the past, the “last of the culture warriors.”

A month ago I might have agreed with you, said Eugene Robinson, also in the Post. But in the final weeks of the campaign, Palin’s once desperate-sounding claim of being a “quick study” started to look like the truth. The Palin who stammered cluelessly through those early interviews became far more “poised and confident,” and she even sounded knowledgeable about economic policy and international relations. The 44-year-old Palin now has four years to continue her education, and “rediscover the flexibility and pragmatism” that made her the most popular governor in America. Democrats may have beaten Sarah Palin this time, but they “underestimate her at their peril.”

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