Sarah Palin in 2012

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McCain is 70 72. He’ll be 74  76 by the time the next elections rolls around. If he wins this time around he most likely will not run in 2012. That makes Palin the Republican presumptive nominee for 2012.  

Course, if McCain wins that means Obama loses and then we might have Hillary versus Palin.  

I’d pay to see that.  

16 thoughts on “Sarah Palin in 2012”

  4. I must say, Lex, you are just the person Britain needed in 1940. We are going to lose, no matter what. Come to think of it, there were many people like you around. Churchill was very unpopular because he would not accept that view. ;-)

  5. Dare I say we may have a nascent ‘Iron Lady’ of our own. Hopefully McCain won’t ‘go wobbly’ on us.

    Ideal scenario:
    McCain/Palin win in 2008
    McCain/Palin win vs Clinton/Deval Patrick in 2012.
    McCain steps down(?) in 2013.
    Jindal appointed VP.
    Palin/Jindal win(every electoral vote) vs. Deval Patrick/Kucinich? in 2016.
    Palin/Jindal clear the table again vs. Ramsey Clark/Jimmy Carter in 2020.

  6. If McCain is elected in November, he will run for a second term unless his health fails. He hasn’t gotten where he is by giving in or giving up.

  7. Helen, wrong on three counts.

    1. I say what I hope will happen, and I say what I think will happen, and I know the difference between them.

    2. Churchill was a leader. What he said had an impact on the confidence of the people he led. He kept his private worries to himself. I am not in that situation. No one is influenced by what I say here. Not one vote will be changed by anything I write here.

    3. Churchill in 1940 was correct that the Germans would not be able to invade England. He kept his cool when others panicked. This situation, while lacking the gravity of 1940, is nothing like that. It is not an objective fact that the Democrats can be beaten, if only everyone stays cool and remembers “we do have a Navy”. It is a matter of whether a few thousand voters in a few counties in a few swing states decide to vote at all, and if so, decide to vote for one party rather than the other. Objectively, by all reasonable measures I have seen, Obama is winning and will likely win. Whether the Palin nomination and the convention and whatever other things McCain does in the weeks ahead can turn that around is an open question. People with money on the table put the odds at 2/1 against him.

  11. Lex,
    I am not going to argue about Churchill and, maybe, I should not have made that comment. I always forget how strongly Americans feel about WSC. However, I really cannot understand what this means;

    “Objectively, by all reasonable measures I have seen, Obama is winning and will likely win.”

    What are those reasonable measures? Where is he winning and how can you or anyone else possibly know how millions of people will vote in November? Obama, as I understand it, did not even win the primary votes. Furthermore, people putting money on what might happen in the future is still only that – people with more money than sense guessing and extrapolating. If they could not work out whom McCain and a few advisers will pick to be his Veep, how can they possibly work out those millions of votes? It makes no sense.

  12. “What are those reasonable measures?”

    Polls. Online betting. Public disgust with President Bush and his party. The massive and overwhelming MSM adoption of Obama. The historical tendency to punish the party in power during an unsuccessful war. McCain’s age. There are probably others.

    “…how can you or anyone else possibly know how millions of people will vote in November?”

    Predicting any kind of future behavior is not perfect. But there are methods. Focus groups and polls, looking at historical trends, which businesses, governments and politicians all use all the time. They are better than nothing but not perfect.

    “…people with more money than sense guessing and extrapolating.”

    I have no reason to say they have more money than sense. It’s their money. Capitalism is founded on the notion that people, in the aggregate, on average, over time, are the best judges of what to do with their money. Prediction markets as well as oddsmakers are a way to reduce vast amounts of information, guesswork, analysis, wishful thinking, all of it, down to a single number — a price.

    “If they could not work out whom McCain and a few advisers will pick to be his Veep.”

    Totally different kinds of analysis. It is our tradition that one person picks the VP. The decision process for one person is much harder to discern than how large aggregates of people will behave. Elections are relatively easy to predict compared to what any one person will decide on any one particular choice.

    Again, I sure hope I am wrong. I am going to vote for McCain even though there is no prayer of him carrying Illinois. I just always vote. And, things may change between now and November 4, 2008. Fingers crossed.

    But what I would like to see happen and what I think will happen are two totally different things.

  13. It appears that McCain is at a disadvantage. However, I think it’s a mistake to give Intrade’s or other predictions too much weight. Look at Intrade’s current odds on an economic recession in 2008. Those odds were nearly 80% in the Spring, before new economic data quashed fears that last year’s mortgage debacle presaged an extended economic slowdown. No one can know whether comparable odds-changing events lie ahead in the presidential campaigns, and I think it’s unwise to make strong predictions.

  14. I was sympathetically following LG’s argument until my head it this speed bump: “unsuccessful war.” Which war are we talking about? I suppose there are a few “wars” which, in a perfect world, could have been managed better, but unsuccessful? Please give me the info on the last successful “enemy” counterattack on U.S. interests since 911. A review of the strategic world map, either ideologically or militarily, provides no clues. Perhaps it’s Georgia he’s talking about: should have been prepared/gave tacit approval to aggressive Georgia policy, blah, blah, blah. If that’s the one, you need to visit Micael Totten’s blog to get the real story on the Georgia conflict. Otherwise, I remain mystified.

  15. “unsuccessful war”

    Readers of this blog are way out of step with the mainstream public view of the war.

    The public perceives the war as a disaster and the president as a buffoon.

    That is the reality McCain has to overcome.

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