Does anyone think Palin's chances for the GOP nom are around 80+?

[Beet]

The talk about Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, etc. reminds me of the talk of Mark Warner, Bayh, etc. back in 2005. When's the last time any of those people were in the news? I know Palin's popularity is limited here, but this is a rather insular site. The Republicans here tend to be more of the moderate variety and tend to know more about less well known figures than the average voter.

There's one superstar among the party base that has been since last year and that's Palin. Sometime between now and January 2012, Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty will have a "Bayh moment", the moment Evan Bayh had when he went to New Hampshire in late 2006. They will realize that all the crowds, all the energy, all the media is going towards one candidate, and it's not them.

The most interesting aspect of the GOP primary, IMHO, has nothing to do with the jokers currently being discussed as 2012 GOP hopefuls (except Palin). Instead, it is what Ron Paul does. Ron Paul is getting awfully old. The most likely, but boring outcome is where Palin remains on good terms with Paulites and adopt some Paulite rhetoric but generally ignores them for the most part. She'll probably be able to do this because, although enthusiastic, the Paulties are not very numerous. The most interesting would be if Paul runs again, gets some grassroots traction, and some dogfight were to break out between Palin and the Paulites. The second most interesting is if Palin becomes a Paulite herself.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The second most interesting is if Palin becomes a Paulite herself.

Now that would be hilarious.

[YankeeFan007]

Palin will not be a Paulite.  She will only pander do them on occasion.

Here's how Palin wins.  Is everybody ready?  Okay so the only way Palin wins is if Huckabee and Jindal don't run and Mitt Romney splits the vote among the moderates with progressive Republicans.  Take it to the bank and deposit your money.   There is no way Palin wins with other high-profile social conservatives in the race.  Same with Huckabee.   

[Mechaman]

No politician today (besides John Edwards) has a bigger hole to climb out of than Sarah Palin.

[pbrower2a]

No politician today (besides John Edwards) has a bigger hole to climb out of than Sarah Palin.

Joe Trafficant.

John Ensign.

Mark Sanford.

Tom DeLay.

[Mr. Morden]

I would say more like 5%.....if that.

[Smash255]

No, I doubt she will be the nominee, but never underestimate the stupidity of the far right.

[The Age Wave]

I still dont think Republicans are this dumb (except Santorum!)!!!

[pbrower2a]

80+ ? Of what?

[You kip if you want to...]

80+ ? Of what?

80 voters nationwide?

[big bad fab]

80+ ? Of what?

80 voters nationwide?

No, no, she'll be the GOP nominate in 1980 or 2080

[Mr. Morden]

Btw, given the craziness of the last two primary cycles (Gore unexpectedly sitting out 2004, Kerry becoming the frontrunner, then having his campaign collapse, only to rebound, and defeat the "inevitable" Howard Dean, Barack Obama unexpectedly deciding to run in 2008 and defeating frontrunner Hillary Clinton, John McCain squandering all his campaign $ and having his campaign collapse to the point of irrelevancy, only to mount a massive rally in the polls just before the primary voting starts....)......

......I don't see how we could rate *anybody* as being 80% likely to win the nomination this far out.  Primaries are just too unpredictable.

[Beet]

I would say more like 5%.....if that.

Why so low? I was driving in NoVa the other day and saw a "Palin 2012" sticker. It's 3 years out and she already has stickers.

Re: 2004 and 2008. In 2004, there never really was any front-runner. Kerry was a mild establishment favorite, but to call him a front-runner would be a stretch. And in 2008, I hate to say it, but Clinton got extremely, extremely unlucky that a candidate of Obama's unique profile happened to be in a position to run for President in the same year she planned to. 9 times out of 10 she would have won that.

But seriously.. why only 5%? What's stopping her? I'd like to agree with you, subjectively.

[Deldem]

At this point, she's probably not angling for president. I'm thinking she'll continue to embrace her new found celebrity status- and all the millions that come with it.

Even if she did run, she would lose- even Republicans aren't particularly fond of her, and this combined with total unelectability makes her incredibly unappealing.

[Citizen James]

80%?  No.  probably better than 8.0% though.  Yes, she is popular with the religious right, which is a sizable portion of the GOP; but so is Huckabee.  And Huck probably has more appeal among the more intellectual of the religious right - which are those who herd the authoritarian RR types toward a certain candidate.  Palin does likely have more appeal to the most base, rage and fear style Republicans, but I'm not sure that's much of an offset.

If I were to guess odds (via rectal extraction, I suppose) I would gauge the likelyhood of nomination as:

Huckabee: 40%
Romney 30%
Pawtney: 10%
Palin:10%
Other: 10%

[Psychic Octopus]

Times change. '08 was a "exciting" year.

[Padfoot]

Palin will lose.  She's not intelligent enough to win against any other candidate and her so called base is practically non-existant.  I imagine she'll manage to muster up a token amount of support but she won't come close to winning.  She'll lose in the north to Romney-like moderates, she'll lose the west to small "l" libertarians, and she'll lose in the South to any social conservative with an ounce of credibility.  The  noisy minority of extremists and birthers who supposedly adore her will follow anyone willing to listen to their ravings and chant with them.  It shouldn't take much to lead them away.

[Lunar]

I don't see what her coherent argument will eventually be to $35 million dollars of negative ads calling her a quitter.  That being in the media spotlight as governor was too hard on her family?  That she could really serve her state better by doing bookdeals?


Ultimately, I think it's close to 5% than 80%, mostly because there's little doubt in my mind that Palin lacks organizational skills to build an efficient, mistake-free campaign.  She's a paper tiger, 100%.

[Eraserhead]

She might have a chance. I wouldn't put her at 80% though, that's for sure. In any case, she would be crushed like a grape in the general (unless Obama raped someone or something). She doesn't have any real appeal outside of the Republican "base" where, admittedly, her appeal is great.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'd be very surprised if she could win the nomination without Huckabee & Romney both declining to run for some reason. She's not necessarily weak with the Republican primary electorate, though she lacks the regional base needed to really make things happen, especially given Huckabee's strength in the South (which includes the important SC primary) & Romney's strength in the Northeast (including New Hampshire).

[Mr. Morden]

I would say more like 5%.....if that.

Why so low? I was driving in NoVa the other day and saw a "Palin 2012" sticker. It's 3 years out and she already has stickers.

Re: 2004 and 2008. In 2004, there never really was any front-runner. Kerry was a mild establishment favorite, but to call him a front-runner would be a stretch. And in 2008, I hate to say it, but Clinton got extremely, extremely unlucky that a candidate of Obama's unique profile happened to be in a position to run for President in the same year she planned to. 9 times out of 10 she would have won that.

There was no *early* frontrunner in 2004, but four weeks out from Iowa, the CW was that Howard Dean was a lock for the nomination.  Likewise, four weeks out from Iowa in 2008, the CW was that McCain was embarrassing himself by remaining in the race.

You can look back in retrospect and argue that it was stupid for people to believe that CW back then, but then people in the future will probably look back at today's CW and say the same thing.  That's all I'm arguing.  That the last two cycles have shown that primaries are very unpredictable, and it's silly to assign anyone as high as an 80% chance of winning at this point.  I am not arguing that 2012 has specific parallels to those earlier cycles.  I'm arguing that multiple cycles have had unique reasons for being volatile, and the next one might be as well.

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This has already been partially covered by comments from subsequent posters, but:

1) I don't think the chances of Palin running in the first place are even 50%, let alone 80%.  Among other things, her resignation this year suggested to me that she's more interested in being a "political celebrity" than an actual politician.  She can still be a political celebrity without running for office.

2) Being "popular with the base" doesn't make you a good presidential candidate.  Glenn Beck is "popular with the base", but he could never win the GOP presidential nomination.

3) To that point, if Palin is such a juggernaut within the GOP, why is Romney already running (at least slightly) ahead of her in the last eight consecutive national polls, going back to May?  Shouldn't she be dominating during the free media-driven "invisible primary", like Hillary Clinton was in 2005/6?

3b) Doesn't that kind of reinforce the notion that the fact that so many Republicans like her doesn't automatically mean they'd vote for her for president?  They can like her, just as they like Beck and Limbaugh, without being ready to give her the nomination.

4) She has demonstrated incredible political ineptitude during the 10 months following the 2008 election, from the half dozen mini-scandals that erupted in Alaska to the bizarre resignation announcement.  I just can't see her surviving a year of campaigning every day in Iowa and participating in monthly debates against Romney and others.

5) Her resignation is likely politically fatal, IMHO.  How the heck does she defend against accusations that she's a quitter, who'll abandon ship whenever the going gets tough?  I can already imagine the negative ads running now.  Seriously, who's to say she wouldn't abruptly resign the presidency in the Summer of 2014?

6) I could go on, but this post is already too long.

[Beet]

I agree that there is a general uncertainty objection to my evaluation of the probabilities. And you may well be right. But I do think it's a mistake to say that just because we were surprised in the last two cycles, it is impossible to assign an 80 percent probability to anything. Probability resets itself every time it is tested, and the fact of being surprised in the past does not increase by one nanofraction the probability of being surprised again. Even if I do assign an 80 percent probability to this, does it mean the 20 percent can never come true? No. But it does mean that the probability of this is 80 percent, given what we know now. The CW that Dean would win the nomination in November 2003 was not silly; it was based on the best we knew at the time. You could have brought up arguments as to why the CW was wrong, but arguing that it was wrong simply because CW is often wrong does not add anything to the discussion.

1) In all my experience as a watcher of politics I have seen many politicians who have attempted to run for office which they had no business running for and where they deluded themselves hope when there was no hope. I have almost never seen any politician who could easily have won office and who was being urged to run for office who did not run. Ambition is human nature. If you think Palin is not interested in being President then you misread human nature. Has she ever issued a Sherman statement? No? Then she is interested.

2) True, but the difference is that Glenn Beck is liked for what he says and how he says it. The product is his program; his wit; his value as an entertainer. Sarah Palin is liked for who she is. The product is her. And that is what people want in a politician.

3) It is true that the polls show Romney running slightly ahead of Palin. And if an election were held today, Romney would probaby beat Palin. I am just wondering how the polls will change once the campaign heats up. Palin has a tendency to get the biggest rallies, get the most media coverage by far, and excite the most partisanship on  both sides. All of these factors will quickly lift Palin to the top once a campaign begins, regardless of what the polls say today.

4) Yes, she has demonstrated great political ineptitude. But during all her political ineptitude, did the Republican base ever abandon her? Who has the highest favorables of any GOP politician today? The attachment to Palin is based on emotion, not reason. The only way Palin would be vulnerable is if somehow the emotional link the GOP base has with her were broken. For example, if it was revealed that she had had or ever counselled an abortion, or something like that.

5) I followed closely Palin's resignation for signs that it indicated that she was done with public office and found none. The simple explanation is that Palin did not want to deal with the inevitable troubles of being Governor during this recession (look at the approvals of some other Governors, for example) and messy opposition she was generating within her home state. These practical problems would have damaged her further and harmed her Presidential bid as much, if not more, than her resigning. Alaska is also quite far away from the lower 48 and there is a chance Palin would have faded away and been forgotten. In other words, it was a millstone around the neck of her career.

[Scam of God]

It's going to be her or Huckabee in 2012. The Religious Right see this as their moment to shine: if they can delegitimize the President to the point that he's hated as much or more than Bush was, they'll have the opportunity to re-mold America in their own image. Expect the smooth-talking, well-dressed businessmen to be oddly absent from the 2012 Republican primaries.

[Lunar]

#4 - Beet, her ineptitude was severely minimized by the fact that McCain campaign kept her mostly controlled.

[Mr. Morden]

I agree that there is a general uncertainty objection to my evaluation of the probabilities. And you may well be right. But I do think it's a mistake to say that just because we were surprised in the last two cycles, it is impossible to assign an 80 percent probability to anything. Probability resets itself every time it is tested, and the fact of being surprised in the past does not increase by one nanofraction the probability of being surprised again. Even if I do assign an 80 percent probability to this, does it mean the 20 percent can never come true? No. But it does mean that the probability of this is 80 percent, given what we know now. The CW that Dean would win the nomination in November 2003 was not silly; it was based on the best we knew at the time. You could have brought up arguments as to why the CW was wrong, but arguing that it was wrong simply because CW is often wrong does not add anything to the discussion.

It matters in the sense that our assessment of the probabilities of future events is guided by the track record of similar scenarios in the past.  If every single person who was ever the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of either party 2 and a half years before the primaries had ended up winning the nomination, then it might even be reasonable to give the person who is now the frontrunner for 2012 as much as a 95%+ probability of winning.  But since recent history has demonstrated that we're not even very good at predicting the winner just a few *weeks* before the primaries, then it's reasonable to be suspicious of putting a lot of confidence into predicting that any one particular person is a near lock to win.

In 2005, I would have said that Hillary Clinton was the early favorite to win the 2008 Dem. nomination, but I would have said that her chances were not as high as 80%, because there are too many things that can still go wrong.  After witnessing the tumultuous 2008 cycle, I'd be even more cautious about giving early frontrunners that great of a chance this far out.  And of course, I don't even regard Palin as the 2012 frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the first place, let alone one who has an 80% chance of winning.

Don't know if I'll actually go through with a point by point rebuttal of my point by point arguments specifically about Palin except to say that getting the biggest rallies and the most enthusiasm from the base doesn't necessarily win you the nomination.  I'm sure Pat Buchanan's supporters were more enthusiastic about him than Dole's were about him in 1996, but Buchanan never got anywhere close to winning the nomination.  Heck, for a more recent example, Huckabee's supporters were likely more excited about him than McCain's were about McCain in 2008.

My overall opinion is that the move to the "real campaign" will actually mean moving into a battle in which Palin has a comparative disadvantage relative to her rivals, as compared to the current "invisible primary" stage, where I would actually expect her to do better.  Of course, you think the opposite, but there's no way for either of us to prove this.  We just have to wait and see.

That is, assuming that Palin is even going to run in the first place, which I'm really not convinced of.