Palin 2012?

Sarah Palin’s nomination for Vice-President was the Republican Party’s definitive insult to the white Evangelical constituency. Rather than Mike Huckabeee or any other perfectly capable white Evangelical, this absurd woman was put on the ticket for a laugh, in the expectation that the hicks would still turn out and vote for her, ha ha ha.

In fact, they did no such thing: President Obama bit deep into the white Evangelical vote, which proved far less inclined to vote for McCain (nominally an Episcopalian, but an attendee at his wife’s Baptist church) and Palin than they had been to vote for Bush and Cheney, both mainline Methodists of the same denomination as Hillary Clinton.

Palin was also an affirmative action candidate, distinguishable only by her sex just as Michael Steele or Bobby Jindal is distinguishable only by his colour. Her nomination had nothing whatever to do with policy.

If she really does show any sign of taking the Republican nomination in 2012, then that will be a very good reason for a strong primary challenge within the Democratic Party from someone who will remind President Obama that it was economically populist foreign policy realists who put him in while retaining their own moral and social conservatism, and who can just as easily put him back out.

That person must be capable of being Vice-President or, even better, of being Secretary of State in place of the present throwback to the very worst of the Democrats’ alienation of economic populists, moral and social conservatives, and foreign policy realists alike.

No one, not even President Obama, deserves a clear run against Sarah Palin.