Jay Valentine, over at American Thinker, has an explanation for what makes left-wingers so crazy when you mention the name of Sarah Palin. He writes:
"The left is telling us something many feel, many find as a hunch, that Sarah Palin is the most dangerous threat to the Obama administration with no close second. The left is telling us this by their "over the top" attacks. Not just the Letterman assaults, but the constant barrage of grievances filed against her in Alaska. The attacks every day on Palin for no apparent reason -- except that the left seems to see her quite differently from any Republican candidate. A difference of kind, not of degree.
They would never do this to Romney, Huckabee or Newt, at least not to this level. There is a clear reason -- these guys couldn't fill up a high school stadium unless they were giving out free beer.
What is the Sarah difference? Well, it's not the issues, at least that is not all of it. It is the charisma factor. Charisma is not learned, it is innate. One is born with it and no amount of training can inject it. Jack Kennedy had it. So did Reagan. Now Obama. Out of the thousands of politicians who have come and gone over the last generation, not one other person has shown "it.""
If you think about it, did Ronald Reagan in 1976 look like he had a chance to become president in 1980? How does Palin's situtation today compare to his in 1977? Is Valentine right to put her in the same category as Kennedy, Reagan and Obama as far as charisma is concerned? Is he right that charisma trumps big money in the internet era?
I'm not usually one to hesitate to express an opinion, but in this case I am not sure. I admire Sarah Palin as a person and she is definitely a symbol of middle America. I admire her beliefs, her tenacity and her cheerfulness in the face of stuff most of us could not put up with. But is she the right candidate for the Republican Party? Is she presidential material? Does she look like the only option just because the leadership of the Republican Party is in such bad shape? I don't know.
What I do know is that she is certainly smarter than Joe Biden. But then . . .
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I've actually seen quite a bit of chatter on liberal blogs hoping that she will be the GOP 2012 candidate (the thinking being that she will be easy to dispatch with). She had a very rough election cycle in 2008, and I am not sure she will be able to shake the bad reputation in the internet age.
The juxtaposition of McCain and Palin was an interesting one. The staunch conservatives said "look, we nominated a 'squishy' and lost, we should have gone with a true conservative like Sarah." The moderates can of course say the converse - that it is conservatives like Palin who made the GOP undesirable. I am not sure, either way, but I think 2012 will be an important test for the conservative movement.
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