By: Nicole Coulter
Running for president is serious business. It’s an 18-month committment minimum if you win the nomination, and a lifetime committment if you win it all. (You never get your old life back.) Indeed, everything about seeking the highest office in the land is so completely … consuming: for you, your family, friends, and supporters.
Maybe, if you’re Sarah Palin, you’re sitting back thinking: You know what? The GOP establishment won’t support me no matter what, maybe I should just say “screw it” and let them try to beat Obama without me.
She might be saying that.
Ok, probably not.
But who could blame her? So few elected GOPers defended her in the wake of Tuscon. It’s probably crossed her mind that if they won’t defend her against a vicious blood libel, it’s pretty tough to imagine their defending her on anything. Why shouldn’t she just let them trot out their candidate of month to try and unseat the first African American president?
Or maybe she’s listening to her family, her mother, voicing concerns about her safety. And it’s just a fact: no amount of secret service protection can provide complete peace of mind that some well-determined whack job couldn’t attempt or succeed in taking her out. Governor Palin has to be willing to literally put her life on the line for her country. It’s a sacrifice that none of us would relish or even imagine.
And certainly, we can’t fail to mention the hungry wolves in the popular media who are salivating with the thought of finishing off Palin for good. They lie in wait – keypads at the ready.
All this constitutes a heavy burden to bear. But there are compelling reasons for Governor Palin to run for president.
1. She is a principled conservative.
These days it’s hard to find someone who has been consistently conservative throughout not just their political career but their entire lifetime. Palin is a product of the Reagan generation. Unlike so many of us who misspent our youth trying out liberalism, she was inspired by the Gipper from the get go, in her college days, and even studied political science in the era of Reagan. From the issue of life, to the role of government, Governor Palin holds strongly conservative views that have been tested in the trenches for 20 years.2. She has consistently broken barriers.
How many people in history have a chance to run for president? It’s a select group. And when you consider the number of women who have had the opportunity, it’s even more selective. Throughout her career, Governor Palin has taken the challenge of being “first.” She was the youngest and first woman mayor of her hometown, the youngest and first woman governor of Alaska, and the only woman selected to run for vice president by the Republican Party. It seems only fitting that she would aspire to be the first woman nominated for the presidency, with a chance of becoming the first woman president. After so many firsts … it just seems natural.3. She is an incumbent’s worst nightmare.
I laugh when I hear people say Palin should wait until 2016 for an “open election” because President Obama is “unbeatable” or something. What part of Palin’s past suggests that she would wait for an easier path to power? She didn’t wait for an easier path when she knocked off the entrenched mayor in Wasilla at the tender age of 32. She didn’t wait for an easier path when she defeated her own party’s governor in 2006 ten years later.
Defeating a sitting president is exceedingly difficult. Indeed, it’s happened just three times in the last 80 years. Of the major GOP candidates in 2012, only Sarah Palin can actually boast of defeating an incumbent to win an executive office. She’s done it twice. Top GOP candidates Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich all ascended to their highest offices through open seat-elections. They won election, but they took easier paths to power. It takes a different kind of courage and fortitude to oust a sitting leader given the electorate’s proclivity to stick with the devil they know. Palin, time and again, dislodges the powerful – pro-actively. We need a proven incumbent “slayer,” a warrior.
4. She knows she can win.
It’s funny how everybody claims Palin is unelectable. She herself would not even be considering running if she did not think she could defeat Obama. She has said as much. While Palin attracted crowds of up to 60,000 on the VP campaign trail, we’re supposed to believe that a candidate like Jon Huntsman who can’t even crack 100 at his announcement speech is a great threat to Obama? Palin knows what most “experts” don’t want to admit: elections are about spurring turnout. Those infamous independent voters are actually just soft Republicans and Democrats who don’t always vote unless they’re given a reason. True swing voters don’t constitute a very large swath of the electorate, and they often swing toward the challenger. A moderate Republican will not inspire the kind of Republican turnout that will be inspired by a true conservative.5. She’s never been a cheerleader.
Unlike others in the GOP race who will remain nameless, Palin has actually never been a cheerleader, for what it’s worth. In high school, she was the captain of the varsity basketball team, ran for the cross country team, and was president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. From sports, she hopped almost immediately into politics as a young mother. Sitting around watching others play the game while shouting words of support is not her thing. I’m trying to picture Palin sitting out 2012. How boring would that be to watch Romney and Bachmann making nice with each other, and Pawlenty trying to remember how to win a debate? I can picture objects flying at the TV set in the Palin household during the nominating process if she’s out. Palin wants in the game, no doubt. And badly.6. She likes to prove people wrong.
From being called a “Spice Girl” by the Wasilla Mayor whom she later defeated by a four-to-one margin … to proving her critics wrong in the governor’s race, Palin thrives on beating the odds. Even long-time aid Meg Stapleton didn’t think Palin was up to the task at first … until she observed her knocking out a 32-year political veteran, Frank Murkowski. It’s so ironic that people have chosen the “she’s stupid” meme to describe Palin. She uses that to her advantage. She’s always been a bookworm, always been well-informed, and she knows how to work hard. The fact that her opponents so easily misjudge her based on her movie star good looks simply adds salt to their wounds when she beats them like a drum.7. Obama is highly beatable.
Now that Obama has an actual record to run on, he’s not looking so good. I have liberal friends on Facebook who have turned on Obama. Every time we turn around he’s getting heckled by a supposedly friendly crowd. His approval hovers at around 45% of likely voters and his re-elect number is south of 40%.Even Obama is suggesting he may be alright with just one term. Good to know! He’s locked us into three wars, unsustainable deficits, and a new healthcare entitlement that has accomplished so far the exact opposite of everything it promised. Palin is in the catbird seat as she has been leading the opposition against Obama since Day One of her national ascendancy. In fact, she predicted Obama’s failures when she called him out for his Greek columns, and history as a community organizer at her RNC speech. She of all the potential GOP nominees has earned the right to say, “See, I told you so.” What other candidate is going to go straight for the juglar day in and day out with the conviction and longevity that Palin has already demonstrated the last three years?
8. She’s made for it.
Governor Palin once reminded us that a “ship in the harbor is safe but that’s not what the ship is made for,” she told us in Dayton, Ohio on Aug. 29, 2008 at her announcement speech. Sitting safely in a harbor is not what Gov. Palin’s exceptional ship was made for. She promised us as a VP candidate that she would go to Washington D.C. to serve for the right reason: to challenge the status quo. A safe, risk-free existence is no existence at all. Palin sees our freedoms, our sovereignty and our national security slipping away through the actions of this reckless, unprincipled administration. In her heart, she can’t let this happen without standing up and attempting to do something about it. That’s what the Tea Party is all about. Four more years of Obama is unacceptable. Crossing our fingers and hoping that the Obamacare Prototype candidate can take out Obamacare is a fool’s task.Like Palin has said in the past … If no one else will do it, I will.
And she will.
I’d bet my house on it.
“Being involved in government is what I was created to do.” – Sarah Palin, gubernatorial candidate, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, March 2006
Conservatives4Palin
