The Establishment Gears Up Against Palin

From Politico:

Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin.

Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns…

In my view, the only person who can realistically stop the Palin Express – should she decide to run – is Chris Christie. The other GOP candidates are mostly a fine group, but none of them have the, well, the romance of a Palin candidacy. Our warrior queen, for whom we will do battle – while she has her high negatives among the general electorate, she is dearly beloved by those who back her, and in a crowded GOP field, she’ll consistently score 40% in the early primaries, more than enough to best everyone else…after a few of those, everyone else will fade away.

Christie can stop her because he’s rapidly becoming a grass roots hero for the way he’s taking on the unions and the Ruling Class in general. If he gets in, he soaks up almost all that Palin doesn’t already have in her corner and thus can make a race of it. The Establishment, of course, wants to stop Palin – she’s dangerous to them as she has been completely rejected by them. In other words, she owes them nothing and so, if elected, will completely destroy them. The fun part is that the only person who can stop her is another anti-Establishment candidate.

Be all that as it may, we can expect many efforts to stop Palin. The official word on it will be that she’s un-electable; the only candidate Obama can beat in 2012. The fact is that Obama can beat any of the GOP hopefuls – beating a sitting President is extraordinarily hard and if the economy improves or any of a host of possible events happen, Obama can be right back on top. No matter how well we do in 2010, we have to work on the assumption that Obama gets re-elected in 2012 – only by having such a framework can we hope to craft a strategy to beat him (and, in the end, if he does end up easy to beat, then we won’t have lost anything by being careful). But the Establishment will want to de-rail Palin not because she might lose to Obama, but because she might win.

Keep that in mind: the goal of the Establishment is to keep out of power those who would destroy the Establishment. All that you’ll hear about Palin over the next year will be colored with this – sift things you hear carefully, and always look for the ulterior motive. But also keep this in mind: its going to be enormously fun. Watching a Ruling Class collapsing upon itself will be endlessly entertaining.

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