Republicans? Future???

A followup comment to the RNC chairmanship, Magic Negros, etc.: The new DNC chair has been named, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia. It's my understanding that when a party is in power, the chair is usually named by the president and elected unopposed. You won't see any Magic Negro BS from Tim Kaine, though. He was the first person to endorse Obama outside of Illinois. He speaks Spanish. He was probably a contender for the veep position.

I didn't know what I was going to write about today, but after reading two posts about the future of the Republican party, I knew I had my topic. Here is one, here is the other. (Absolutely read those. They're much better than anything on this shitty blog.) Not knowing much about technology, but having a loud mouth, I decided to use this entry to perhaps answer a question that's been nagging at me, a question that must be answered in order to properly debate the future of the Republican party...

So what do they do with Sarah Palin?

Ugh. Now if there's one person in the world who drives me to irrational hate, it's Sarah Palin. If I talk about her in front of you, make sure you are out of spittle range. Ugh, ugh. A vile woman. And the most popular, most energizing person in the Republican Party! Yes, if there's one person who knows how to fire up the Republican rank and file, it's Sarah Palin. Problem is, she's not so popular in the reality based community. She believes dinosaurs are Jesus horses. She believes that you shouldn't teach your child about birth control, or that your kids should go to college. She believes it's acceptable for the First Dude to listen in on Alaska cabinet meetings. She believes in grifting, like grifting the RNC for shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus. She will be, after Jan. 20, the most dangerous person in American politics. At least in my opinion.

Problem! She's governor of Alaska. Now Alaska, it seems, is quite far away from the mainland US. A guy like Rick Perry, or Mark Sanford, or Bobby Jindal can go jet off to Iowa or NH easily and build a national following. But Wasilla is rather farther away from Iowa and NH than Austin or Columbia or Baton Rouge. What's a governor to do?

Of course, one answer is that unlike those three men, Palin is quite widely known. So she can just run for President (you know she will) based on name recognition. It worked for Hillary Clinton (sorta), although not for Rudy Giuliani. So she can run for reelection in 2010 and win, and still make a credible run for President. But there's another, more interesting scenario: Run for Senate! Senators, it seems, don't do shit. Look at Obama and McCain, especially McCain: They didn't attend to their Senate duties at all (or hardly at all) during the campaign. Washington DC is much closer to Iowa/NH than Wasilla. Now, yeah, I know, there's an incumbent senator already, a Republican: Lisa Murkowski. Palin, you might recall, beat an incumbent Republican governor in 2006. His name? Frank Murkowski, father of Lisa Murkowski, a former Senator who appointed her to his vacated Senate seat when he became governor. That's some pretty ballsy nepotism. A little too ballsy - although Lisa won reelection in 2004 (by 3 points), Frank was consistently unpopular for his first term. Don't you think it would be tempting for Palin to slay another Murkowski? I know I do.

What would a Palin/Murkowski battle look like?

Interesting results. And that's why I think she'll go for the Senate. Being governor will get a lot harder soon enough. Those checks everyone in Alaska gets are gonna be a lot smaller with the decrease in oil price. And the reason she is so popular in Alaska is because of the checks.

Anyway. I've done an awesome job of answering the question: What does Sarah Palin's future look like? And a piss poor job of answering the question: So what do they do with Sarah Palin?

Here's my answer: Well, shit. They really can't do anything. McCain's campaign couldn't control her at all (just look at the insider accounts), so the RNC/Republican muckety-mucks definitely can't control her. She's a maverick ;) dontcha know. Seriously, I don't see her responding well to pressure. If they pressure her not to run for Senate, they will fail. Unless they bribe her of course. But Sarah Palin has expensive tastes. Same goes for President.

So we'll have Palin to kick around for many years yet. What does this mean for the Democrats? If Obama makes things better, the Democratic Party will be fine. They have a lock on the youth vote and minorities, as I explained earlier. If everything keeps going to shit and there's no improvement by 2012, that will be troublesome for Obama and the Democrats. I suspect Palin will be the Republican nominee in 2012. If she becomes President, God help us all. She certainly won't.

To follow on from my Moment of Zen yesterday, here is another pretty funny video. Wang Cares.