Here's an interesting passage from a Politico piece on Sarah Palin's book tour in the northeast; the gist of the piece is that she's ignoring the GOP establishment as she free-lances her way up the coast.
Even Republicans who are critical of Palin concede that she has made a career – and a rather successful one – out of breaking political rules. Now, though, she appears to be in danger of crossing the fine line between flouting expectations and just flat-out ignoring the essential mechanics of the political process.
What are the "essential mechanics" of winning the GOP nomination? Getting your name on the ballot in primary states and filing with the FEC is about it, if we're boiling it down to the bare essentials.
You generally need to raise money if you're planning to be competitive, but you don't need to hold $500/plate fundraiser at every stop; in the Internet age, you can slap a request for donations on your website and call for a moneybomb on day X. She could have a few million in the bank within a day of putting out the word.
Do you need a cadre of advisers, old hands of Washington, advising you? Not really. You might not nail every question, like Herman Cain's muffing of the right-of-return issue in the Israel-Palestinian debate, but if you're spending time talking to Joe Sixpack at a WalMart (which most of her folks aren't), you'll make up for that by understanding the facts on the American ground better. Palin isn't going to get credit for policy chops from the establishment even if she spent the next year at the Kennedy School at Harvard.
She's not raising money or developing a "team." That's not needed when your appeal isn't to the establishment. Appealing to average voters is what is needed, and she has a decent shot at that. There are more WalMart voters than Politico or National Review voters, even though the latter batch get to do the talking in the early stage.
I'm not yet a Palin backer. Cain and Pawlenty are my top two picks at present of those who have announced and Palin would be in the mix were she to make the plunge. She's a bit of a loose cannon, but there is more than a bit of Reagan there in that both Palin and Reagan have/had a gut feel for how things should be and ability to express it to the average voter.
What makes her interesting is that she's coming at things from odd planes; instead of being a college professor or corporate executive or think-tanker during her out-of-office patch, she is using social media and doing an outdoors show. It doesn't come close to fitting the mold of a presidential candidate, but the molds aren't requirements. They're just the standard way of doing things for typical pols.
If she does run, it will be interesting to see her make her own mold, one that is unlikely to be copied anytime soon, not because it's bad but because of near-unique circumstances. She's taking advantage of being a celebrity in an era that can have people make a media niche out of being famous, regardless of where that fame came from. Her daughter is making the most of the infamy of being knocked up while one's mom was on a presidential ticket, and mom is playing the celebrity card well as well.
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