Last month, after nearly two months of post-election wrangling, Tea Party candidate Joe Miller's final attempt to have the courts overturn the will of Alaska's voters was rebuffed and the last death rattle of his Senate campaign finally fell silent. Sarah Palin had backed Joe Miller, and his defeat was a blow to her reputation as a kingmaker, particularly since this happened in her own backyard and at the hands of the voters who had once elected her. Also, while this defeat on its own may be a bitter pill for Palin to swallow, the broader narrative may be devastating to her.
Combining this loss with those of Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware we can perhaps connect the dots and draw certain inferences. In Delaware, Republican Mike Castle looked like a shoo-in to pick up a seat but the party didn't nominate him, and in Nevada, as I pointed out in a post this summer, Republicans could have easily ousted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with any credible candidate, but instead they chose Sharron Angle. The common thread in all of these cases is the limitation of anger and resentment. While the most radical faction of the Tea Party may cast enough votes to foist an embarrassing candidate on the Republican Party, the general electorate is still unwilling to select a candidate who is clearly unqualified for the position he or she seeks. Unless the public reverses this trend and develops an appetite for manifestly unqualified candidates, Sarah Palin will never win another election.
If Abraham Lincoln were alive today he could use Sarah Palin as "Exhibit A" in support of his words, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." These days she seems unable to open her mouth without her stock plummeting. She has a rabid base of hardcore supporters who tend to show up at Tea Party rallies ranting, raving and wielding cardboard signs of misspelled hate speech, but there aren't enough of these fanatics to help her win a general election. The ranks of those who hold a favorable view of Palin keep dwindling while the ranks of those who view her unfavorably continue to swell.
More importantly, to the extent Palin continues to be such a force in the Republican Party as 2012 approaches, President Obama benefits mightily. Look at the two speeches given on the same day in the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy. When the nation needed a leader, President Obama showed us what a leader looks like. Sarah Palin by contrast revealed her true character as a petty, self-absorbed opportunist who lacks enough presidential timber to build a matchstick. The unavoidable comparison of these two speeches sent public opinion of these two people in opposite directions. It became hard to picture Sarah Palin as a great president of the Miley Cyrus Fan Club let alone the United States of America. Palin's apologists say that she had to come out and defend herself as she did because she was the target of unfair accusations, and President Obama had the luxury of being above the fray. This is so absurd that it's hard not to laugh out loud. Yes, Palin had some stones unfairly cast her way, but for every such pebble directed at her, President Obama has had an entire quarry of rocks thrown at him by, among others, Sarah Palin herself.
Palin could be an unwitting blessing to Barack Obama's reelection in a number of ways. The dream scenario would be her running as a third party, perhaps Tea Party, candidate, which would give neither her nor the Republican nominee a prayer of winning. Failing that, if she goes deep into primary season beating up on fellow Republicans, the damage could provide the margin of victory for a second Obama administration. Also, if she seeks the nomination and is roundly rejected by the voters who know she can't win a general election, this could strip the all-important enthusiasm factor from the far right fringe of the party, which is her base and an increasingly important voting bloc for the Republicans. Finally, if she just continues sucking all the oxygen from the room, diverting attention away from serious men and women who seek the Republican nomination, she does her party a disservice and gives President Obama a great gift.
