I said last week that “pundits don’t have a clue” and gave examples of just how wrong they are. One at least has admitted his lengthy period of dismissal of Sarah Palin’s chances should she declare as a GOP candidate. Which, although stating the obvious by inference that, even as a research fellow at Oxford University specializing American politics, he, Dr Timothy Stanley, doesn’t have a clue and changes his opinions with the wind.
The “ordinary soldiers” at such sites as Conservatives4Palin have been saying exactly this for a year at least, but such insights escape the vast majority of professional and academic pundits because their political positions and elitist nature blind them to the fact that,as Stanley discovers, as the scales fall from his eyes, that Palin may, just may, actually be of intelligence and is in reality a strategist of the highest order.
If she declares and wins the nomination, a vast number of pundits will have egg on their collective faces and will wake up to a new reality. Further, their career options will be quite narrow, as nobody except the most partisan on the left will take their opinions with any more credence than that of the guy next door over the backyard fence.
Here’s his amazing discovery and change of mind from The Telegraph.
Strangely, the stronger candidate is Sarah Palin. For months now, commentators (me included) have been saying that she is damaged goods and that the longer she has waited to announce her candidacy, the less logistically possible it has become. But now we’re wondering if Mrs Palin hasn’t been playing a brilliant long game, letting the other candidates beat each other up before entering the fray. Perhaps the biggest issue of this primaries season is authenticity: Romney has none and Perry’s has been called into doubt. Palin is low on personnel and money, but the Tea Party knows who she is, believes in her and will back her if there’s no viable conservative alternative. There’s no one more authentically Right-wing than Sarah Palin.
Palin is just five points behind President Obama in a hypothetical match-up: a better position than Rick Perry. If she jumped in now – and it would have to be now – she would eclipse Perry as the anti-Romney candidate overnight. Perhaps this won’t happen; perhaps it is too late for her. But the shadow that Palin and Christie are casting over this race is indicative of its uncertainty. After all these noisy debates, we’re no closer to knowing who will beat Obama in 2012.
ORIGINAL POST AT M JOSEPH SHEPPARD’S A POINT OF VIEW