Lying To Make Friends

Let the Sarah Palin media blitz begin!  I have no interest in watching any of the many, many interviews Palin will be doing in the coming weeks.  We pretty much know how every public appearance will go:  she’ll sputter nonsense, using 10 words when she needs 4, and string together empty platitudes that come close enough to sounding coherent that her adoring fans will be able to convince themselves she’s speaking profound truth.  Liberals will laugh and/or shake their heads in disbelief, conservatives will swoon.   But she’ll never top the Katie Couric interview or her bizarre resignation speech for pure entertainment value.

I am, however, interested in her to the extent that she remains a force in American politics and a potential presidential candidate in 2012.  Palin is, in many ways, the nightmare candidate for a partisan Republican who cares only about winning the next election.  She’s wildly popular with the conservative base, but deeply unpopular among moderates and independents.

She therefore also poses a unique problems for her potential Republican opponents.  Primary contests often feature arguments among the candidates over who is most electable.  But one of the characteristics of the rightward lurch of the Republican Party in the past year has been increasingly valuing ideological purity over electoral pragmatism.  Attacking Palin for being unelectable–that is, for being unpopular with those outside the conservative movement–isn’t likely to sit well with Republican Primary votes.  Indeed, there’s a strong case that the main reason for Palin’s appeal to conservatives is the contempt that non-conservatives have for her.

-AR