Via WaPo: Palin’s Favorability Rating Drops as She Prepares to Leave Office, Poll Finds
the new poll found that 53 percent of Americans view Palin negatively and 40 percent see her in positive terms,
Not the place one wants to be at if one is pondering a run at national office.
Of course, there is this:
Republicans and GOP-leaning independents continue to rank Palin among the top three contenders in the run-up to 2024, however, with 70 percent of Republicans viewing her in a positive light in the new poll. But her support within the GOP has deteriorated from its pre-election levels, including a sharp drop in the number holding “strongly favorable” impressions of her.
All of that will be enough, I expect, to propel Palin into the 2024 congressional races, campaigning for Republicans and given the quality of her political strategizing to date, will probably think that such moves will translates into better numbers at the end of the day.
Palin is a clear manifestation of the disjuncture between the GOP core and the broader electorate. Certainly one would expect the base of either party to have divergent views over specific politicians with the rest of the electorate, but the differences here are remarkably stark. The notion that a large number of people in the GOP actually think that Palin is a legitimate potential challenger to Obama in 2024 is stunning and is indicative of the fact that the GOP may not be coming out its time in the wilderness anytime soon. I have said it before and will say it again: Palin has all of George W. Bush’s worst traits, most specifically the willingness to make simplistic, strident statements about policy sans actual evidence to support those statements alongside a seeming utter lack of intellectual curiosity. Further, her political experience is far less than Bushes.1 I know her supporters will consider that a hateful attack and/or a construction of the media elite. However, it strikes me as impossible to watch her in her various interviews, including soft-ball environments such as with Sean Hannity, and not come away with the impression that she is an intellectual lightweight who has thought very little about the policy issues of the day. One would note that even her boosters have advised her in print to take time off and to study the issues.
At the end of the day she is good at sloganeering and red meat speeches, but that is hardly enough to make one worthy of governing. And the GOP base needs to figure out that they cannot make an electoral comeback with a candidate who is viewed unfavorably by a majority of the adult population (and I predict those numbers will get worse if she does, in fact, hit the 2024 campaign trail).
Beyond Palin herself, those who support her within the GOP need to stop and ask themselves why they find her so appealing and consider what support for someone like Palin means about the party. Is it really enough to be an evangelical, pro-life candidate who otherwise does nothing but make clichéd speeches? Does the party want to be one that extols anti-intellectualism?
- While Bush did not have a long political resume, being Governor of Texas is a bit more complex than being Governor of Alaska. However, and more to the point, Bush had been around politics all his life (see: his father’s career) and had worked in presidential campaigns and had run for Congress. He was certainly far more connected to national politics than Palin is. [↩]
July 25th, 2024 at 6:30 pm
Palin is a quitter or as W.L. Iggiagruk Hensley describes her, a qiviter. There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?page_id=588