It’s just Sarah being Sarah
Election Day 2012 is just 521 days away.
Are you ready to vote?
Republicans are fumbling around trying to find the perfect candidate to take on Barack Obama. The current list of declared, undeclared or frequently mentioned Republican presidential candidates are: Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Jim DeMint, Chris Christie, Gary Johnson and Paul Ryan.
That list doesn’t include the names Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump or Mitch Daniels, who have each declined to run, despite having some favorable (at different times) presidential polling numbers.
So that leaves more than a dozen would-be candidates who are causing their fellow Republicans to get a bit anxious about retaking the White House in 2012.
Gingrich has his controversial marital history (complete with extra-marital dalliances) and his recent flip flop about the supposed “social engineering” in the Ryan budget proposal. He’s now onboard with a Republican Medicare retooling plan that could become the source of a Democratic battle cry come Election Day 2012.
Romney has his own (Massachusetts) health-care reform law that’s very similar to Obama’s health-care reform law.
He also had gone on record as being against the auto bailout that’s considered one of Obama’s true successes.
The unexciting Pawlenty has numerous issues that he has flip-flopped on over the years.
He was against the health-care reform law, then he opened the door so his state could take health-care reform money; he supported Cap-and-Trade before it became unpopular for Republicans to support it.
Bachmann, Santorum and DeMint are so far right politically, they’ll have a hard time getting the nomination.
Huntsman, Cain, Johnson and Ryan (the author of that now-defunct plan to send the nation’s Medicare recipients onto the open market) are all still relative unknowns to most Republicans.
So unknown, that in some polls Cain, the former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza, is leading despite his rather exotic take on some issues.
Cain claims he won’t unveil his Afghanistan policy until he steps into the Oval Office.
That’s a unique campaign strategy. “Vote for me because I have a still-to-be-announced plan,” won’t pass muster with many voters.
Cain’s inexperience as a political candidate, for some reason, doesn’t matter to some potential voters who have been dazzled by him.
Huntsman, on the other hand, isn’t enjoying the kinds of automatic celebrity as Cain.
A recent Public Policy Polling poll showed that out of 481 Republican voters in Iowa, the former ambassador to China only got support from one voter.
Paul’s popularity is small but rabid. A rabidly small candidacy won’t gain him more than a space at the podium during a couple of Republican presidential debates.
There’s Christie, governor of New Jersey, who says he’s not running for president, while it’s clear he would be a favorite among the party faithful if he does take the plunge.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a hinting problem. He’s hinting he could jump into the presidential sweepstakes. But his April 2009 hint that he could lead his state to secede from the Union, might imperil his presidential aspirations before he announces them. One American Civil War may have been enough, don’t you think?
Then there’s Palin. Like Trump, she has had her hardcore following. And, too, like Gingrich, she’s got a huge number of people who just don’t take her seriously.
A recent USA Today/Gallup nationwide poll showed that 64 percent of the registered voters asked would “definitely not vote for” Trump, and 65 percent wouldn’t vote for Palin.
But that hasn’t stopped Palin from playing coy with the media about her potential run for the presidency.
She’s traveling around with her family on a bus. She’s visiting national historic sites, and having a slice of pizza with the politically toxic Trump.
She’s offering herself up for easy photo-ops, banal political chatter and the kinds of speculation that steals the spotlight from Republicans who’ve already declared their candidacies.
She’s Sarah being Sarah.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.