What if…?

In all honesty, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of just how different this GOP primary season would have been with Sarah Palin in the mix.  Timothy Stanley, an Oxford University historian, correctly (in my opinion) lays out what this presidential campaign season might have looked like had Governor Sarah Palin declared her candidacy.

 

From CNN:

(CNN) — The Republican presidential primary hasn’t exactly overflowed with talent. In December, it was a roll call of the undesirable Right: Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, Perry, Huntsman and Bachmann — a list so long and bizarre that Count Dracula could have slipped in on the end and no one would have noticed. Except, as the citizens of Chicago will tell you, the dead always vote Democrat.

Now, we’re down to a final three, discounting Ron Paul, who, I’m guessing, is only staying in the race to collect air miles. Although the talent pool has shrunk, it has gotten no deeper. As Mitt Romney suffers defeat after defeat at the hands of Rick Santorum, whose chances of winning this thing aren’t high, his negatives mount up, and the president looks stronger by the day. The Republican Party is divided and in danger of becoming out of touch.

It didn’t have to be this way. If Sarah Palin had entered the contest, I’d hypothesize two alternative realities. One, she’d have the nomination sewn up by now. Two, she’d be running even in the polls with the president.

What have proved to be problems for the top three candidates wouldn’t have been problems for Palin. For starters, she has none of Newt Gingrich’s intellectual hubris. There’s no way Palin would have promised to put a mine on the moon or suggest arresting judges who make decisions that are too liberal. Her conservatism is far more domestic and down-to-Earth.  More