Palin frightens Left

This morning, the Washington Post provides two opposing opinions of Sarah Palin. The first is a news story about a poll, a Washington Post/ABC poll in regards to support for Palin among Americans;

Although Palin is a tea party favorite, her potential as a presidential hopeful takes a severe hit in the survey. Fifty-five percent of Americans have unfavorable views of her, while the percentage holding favorable views has dipped to 37, a new low in Post-ABC polling.

There is a growing sense that the former Alaska governor is not qualified to serve as president, with more than seven in 10 Americans now saying she is unqualified, up from 60 percent in a November survey. Even among Republicans, a majority now say Palin lacks the qualifications necessary for the White House.

Palin has lost ground among conservative Republicans, who would be crucial to her hopes if she seeks the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Forty-five percent of conservatives now consider her as qualified for the presidency, down sharply from 66 percent who said so last fall.

Qualified? I don’t even know what that means anymore after watching the amateur talent show that currently occupies the West Wing of the White House. That clown car skit that careens in one direction then comically switches direction 180 degrees, dumps off riders and skitters off into the stands.

Of course, a similar poll in the late 70s might have discovered the same sentiment in regards to Ronald Reagan.

But it’s difficult to overcome the media’s trumpeting of the two smartest guys to ever work in the White House – Obama and Biden. Obama has never made decision and Biden had never voiced a policy decision that was right. Poll the public on that, Washington Post.

The other article is an opinion piece by David Broder in which he warns the Democrats that Palin can actually beat them in 2012 if they don’t take her seriously.

Freed of the responsibilities she carried as governor of Alaska, devoid of any official title but armed with regular gigs on Fox News Channel and more speaking invitations than she can fulfill, Palin is perhaps the most visible Republican in the land.

More important, she has locked herself firmly in the populist embrace that every skillful outsider candidate from George Wallace to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton has utilized when running against “the political establishment.”

George Wallace? Hardly. But the most instructive part of the article isn’t in Broder’s piece, it’s in the readers’ comments a sample of which I’ve captured for posterity;

I’ll grant that the Washington Post’s readers are hardly representative of mainstream American voters, but it does demonstrate the fear level in regards to Palin among Democrats. If you support Palin, you’re a clown, a pervert and a Nazi. Some of you who were here during the 2008 elections remember that the main reason the leftists didn’t support Palin was because she was “scary” – apparently more scary than Joe Biden who has been consistently wrong on every US policy for the last thirty years. Joe Biden who plagiarized his way through college and still only got mediocre grades…which he lies about these days.

Yes, Republicans might be moving away from Palin – but they do that. They run away from viable candidates because they listen to Democrats and pick candidates the Democrats tell Republicans they like – which is how we got John McCain on the ticket.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter, John McCain/Sarah Palin, Politics