Remember when Sarah Palin was the 600-pound gorilla of the 2012 GOP presidential primaries, the one everyone was watching, the candidate around whom everything would revolve? Eh, not so much:
A new poll of New Hampshire voters is the latest in a string of surveys suggesting that if Sarah Palin chooses to run for president, she'll struggle in the crucial early states.
The WMUR Granite State Poll released late Monday afternoon puts Palin close to the basement, trailing not just frontrunner Mitt Romney, but even the little-known former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. More daunting: She’s viewed unfavorably by a full 50 percent of likely Republican primary voters, compared to the 33 percent who view her favorably.
In the poll, Romney is way ahead in New Hampshire, followed by a bunch of candidates in single digits, including Palin at 6 percent. That's right, 6 percent. The story goes on to say that other polls have shown her trailing badly among Republican voters in Iowa and South Carolina, the other two critical early states, as well.
How did such a thing happen? It's just a crazy theory, but maybe there is something less than a perfect correlation between getting media exposure and convincing people that you ought to be the president of the United States, particularly when the exposure you get consists largely of things like feuding with your daughter's baby-daddy.
When we look back at the odd spectacle that was Sarah Palin, it will probably be the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that stands as the moment when even Republicans decided that this person should never be president. Palin's appalling response, in which instead of acting statesmanlike she acted as though she was the real victim and whined about the "blood libel" committed against her, made her true nature nearly impossible to deny.
So a Sarah Palin presidency seems like one thing we don't have to worry about. For the moment, anyway -- after all, she's only 47, which means she could be a contender in every election from now to 2036.
