Will McCain’s Savior In GOP Primary Prove to Be … Sarah Palin?
You may have seen the new Rasmussen poll finding that John McCain is locked in an uncomfortably close GOP primary with conservative challenger J. D. Hayworth.
So who will save McCain’s hide and career? Bill Kristol has a suggestion:
Still, who could help McCain beat back a populist conservative challenger? Sarah Palin. I predict that Palin will come to Arizona next summer to campaign for McCain, will make an impassioned case for him, and will help him win. She will thereby repay McCain for his confidence in picking her last year, help keep McCain as a crucial voice in the Senate for a strong foreign policy, and get credit for being a different kind of populist conservative — a Reaganite, not a Buchananite, populist — than the immigration-obsessed, voter-alienating (he was ousted in 2006 in a Republican district) Hayworth.
Yeah, okay, because Palin is known to harbor a bottomless reserve of gratitude towards the McCain camp for plucking her from relative obscurity and turning her into a national celebrity, right?
In all seriousness, Kristol is close to Palin — the Weekly Standard crew stays in close touch with her — so this possibility can’t be dismissed.
Imagine what a great story it would be if Palin swooped in and saved McCain by playing Pied Piper to Palin Nation on his behalf — winning over the hordes that never have been able to bring themselves to trust him. On the other hand, if she declined to do that, it would be an even better story.
Either way, the whole storyline is a tantalizing one.
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Tantalizing!
As in, my last prostate exam was tantalizing.
In all seriousness, during the GE when McCain started to campaign in his own state, it was obvious the guy was in trouble.
I’m hoping immigration reform starts on strong at least before the primaries. This will force all the Republican candidates to shift off the deep end. All moderates will be purged. The Hispanic vote will be the GOP’s Waterloo.
If Palin had any brains at all she would do this, so I immediately doubt it will happen (but can’t rule it out). One – it gives her the role of king maker, and everyone wants one of those at her side. Two – She gets, basically, the 2010 narrative wrapped around her and McCain… even though she isn’t running for any office and quit her last one (big win), she appears serious about politics again. Finally – She demonstrates party loyalty, sticking up for “the one that brung her” and that might make some of the party elite get off her back and allow others to come to her side. It allows her to become a power WITHIN the party, instead of running an insurgency campaign. She cares about power, prestige, and money so I would go for it if I were her.
She’d still lose in 2012 though, the GOP just can’t hold national office when they appeal to such narrow demographics.
I’d like to see some more polling from a non-Rass source before I get excited about this being close.
Oh, c’mon! Hayworth hasn’t even declared himself a candidate. And he wouldn’t stand a chance once the campaign got rolling and his past scandals were brought to light (Abramoff, PAC payments to wife). If anything, Hayworth is trying to drum up PR for his radio show. McCain won’t need Palin’s help (but it probably wouldn’t hurt amongst AZ Republicans).
I think McCain, like his predecessor, Barry Goldwater, should retire honourably rather than let then drive him to the far right, sucking up to the fringe element of his party. He has a life time of achievement that will be badly damaged if he losses a primary or let Ms Palin dictate his policy positions.
I predict that Quitter Palin will attend a rally for McCain, provided he comes up with her $100,000.00 Appearance fee, pays her travel and lodgings expenses, prevents all media coverage, and closes it to the public.
Yup Yup. You Betcha!!!
http://thepage.time.com/what-palins-speaker%E2%80%99s-bureau-insists-on-to-get-her-to-the-granite-state/
“In the wake of reports that Palin wanted money to speak to a conservative group in Iowa, here is what one New Hampshire organization interested in booking the former Alaska governor was told by the agency that sets up her speeches would be required to get her to appear in the spring of 2010.
–$100,000, plus first class travel for 2; coach for one and lodging expense.
–No media allowed to cover the speech.
–No taping for archival purposes unless Palin herself personally approved it.
The group was also told that Palin at that point had no events scheduled anywhere in the northeastern United States all spring. The closest engagements under consideration were in Ohio in the early spring.”
There is one other possibility. She could go to Arizona and do the same thing she did for Hoffman. The best possible outcome would be if both she and McCain were humiliated……again!
SBJ, our drone success rate just went up. 8 killed in NW Pakistan, 8 militants, 100% success rate for this strike.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/11/us_missile_strike_kills_8_in_pakistan_1.php?ref=fpa
@Ethan,
SBJ will wait until Al-Qaeda claims they were all civilians, and he will take their word for it, like he has in the past.
HA! When palin, beck, hannratty, bill-the-clown, limberger and the Club for Growth come out instead for bullets and bibles, McCain is TOAST!!! Dick Armey will see to that…WAY too liberal..Cindy and he may as well fly to Sedona today and drink some more tequila….
And if Ms. Palin’s too busy — maybe Joe The Plumber can save him.
“SBJ, our drone success rate just went up. 8 killed in NW Pakistan, 8 militants, 100% success rate for this strike.”
Excellent – I like dead bad guys.
Now explain why these guys do not deserve any rights or a trial while KSM does.
@liam: Ha ha! You’re barking up the wrong tree. Even ethan acknowledges that our drone strikes have killed many dozens of civilians.
Now explain why these guys do not deserve any rights or a trial while KSM does.
Try thinking about what summary execution of a prisoner says about us, rather than about what they deserve.
The right’s problem in all of their stances on Al Qaeda members is that they’ve decided we need to be just as lawlessly reprehensible, or worse, than they are, and yet they still fully expect us to be regarded as the good guys.
The trouble is, life isn’t a Dirty Harry movie.
(than Al Qaeda’s members are)
SBJ,
You capture them, and bring them in, and we will give them all trials. That is a promise.
“Try thinking about what summary execution of a prisoner says about us.”
Doesn’t a drone strike on a suspect count precisely as summary execution?
It’ll be a sweet schadenfreude indeed all over again if that twit from tundras makes that old guy lose it again. I am so looking forward to that.
@oddjob: “The right’s problem in all of their stances on Al Qaeda members is that they’ve decided we need to be just as lawlessly reprehensible, or worse, than they are.”
I don’t understand what you are saying. Right now we are killing suspects without trial or any due process in a sovereign nation with which we are not at war. They aren’t being afforded the opportunity to put up a defense in an article III court. Why? Because we are at war with al qaeda and those who harbored them wherever they may be. That’s what congress authorized. KSM was captured as a POW in Pakistan and therefore should be subjected to military justice and not a civil trial. Why does he get special rights that other al qaeda and Taliban in Pakistan do not? Liam seems to think that any prisoner we capture during war deserves an article III court trial. That’s just crazy.
So we’ve gone from fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here, and catching them dead or alive, to not fighting them there and instead trying to just catch them alive, as long as the trial is military and not civilian? And people wonder why conservatives frittered away all that political capital after 9/11.
Right winger Daniel Larison:
“If she [Republican Sarah Palin] is supposed to represent some great right-populist hope, he [Republican John McCain] is the deal-brokering, bipartisan “moderate” Beltway denizen who assiduously cultivates the media, but the reality is that he chose her partly because she reminded him of his own combative, arrogant, egocentric style and his habit of breaking party ranks to aggrandize himself.
Were she to side openly with McCain in a primary against Hayworth, whose views match up a lot more closely with her supporters’ views, she would be seen as imitating McCain’s worst habits. She would be considered a worse sell-out than McCain. She would be doing exactly the opposite of what she did in NY-23. Her intervention may have failed to elect Hoffman, but rank-and-file conservatives generally loved her for it anyway. She would fritter all that away if she backed McCain. In exchange for the contempt and disaffection of the people who currently adore her, she would win the enduring affection of editors at The Weekly Standard. McCain seems to be satisfied with this, but I doubt it would be enough for Palin.
Perhaps Palin could come up with some tortured rationale that siding with the establishment-friendly incumbent would be the crazy “maverick” thing to do, much as she claimed that staying in office would be the easy way out and quitting would be the courageous, bold move, but she would destroy the foundation of rank-and-file conservatives’ love for her.”
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/11/20/a-sure-path-to-self-destruction/
Though no one really knows; Arizona could do us all a big favor and show McCain the door. Would that send a shock wave! Kyl has already verbally cleared the way for McCain, and if he cannot win with that then he’s definitely ready for retirement.