A Rassmusen Poll found the following today:

“Forty percent (40%) of Republican voters nationwide say Sarah Palin’s decision to resign as governor of Alaska hurts her chances of winning the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of GOP voters finds that (24%) believe Palin’s resignation helps her chances of winning the Republican nomination, while 28% say it will have no impact on the race.”

So why does the headline read:

“40% of GOP Voters Say Resignation Hurts Palin’s Chances in 2012”

Today a Rasmussen Poll has things pretty much at a three way tie for a GOP 2012 primary. Rasmussen Reports:

“In a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, it’s close to a three-way tie when GOP voters are asked whom they would vote for – from among a list of six prominent Republicans - in the 2012 party primary in their state: 25% say Romney, while 24% say Palin and 22% opt for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.”

Is this poll bad news for Sarah Palin? The answer is no. This poll comes right on the heels of Sarah Palin’s recent announcement that she will be stepping down as Alaska’s governor later this month. The media coverage by the liberal media and GOP Washington Beltway types has been typical and predictable; they are all claiming that Sarah’s decision is political suicide. I confess that on Friday I was even taken by surprise but I have since turned a deaf ear to the liberal media and GOP Beltway pundits and I thought things through. The Democrats were going to continue to hammer away at this woman for the rest of her term driving her legal costs into the millions, and remember she is not rich. Second, Sarah Palin has for some time now desired to play a major role in the 2010 primaries which really start in about 5 months from now. Third, if she wants to run in 2012 she has to move down to the “lower 48” to build up her political machine, her political IOU’s, and raise money. All of this takes time and Sarah knows this. I also believe that Sarah Palin wants to take over as the leader of the GOP and remake it in her Reaganesque conservative image, which she can do because of her huge popularity and influence with the GOP base.

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll was today released, but while the article paints a picture that does not favor Sarah Palin for 2012, nothing could be further from the truth and I will use Gallup’s own poll numbers to show this. Today Gallup wrote:

“When it comes to a potential presidential run, the USA TODAY poll displays both Palin's strength in the Republican base and her weakness among the swing voters who usually decide national elections. Republicans by 71%-27% say they would be likely to vote for her if she ran for president in 2012, while independents by 51%-44% would not.”

So how is this “good news” for Sarah Palin? Take a look at a finding by Gallup last month:

“Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal.”

In 1980 Ronald Reagan went after and captured the 40% of conservatives by simply being an unabashed conservative. He also received 1/3 of the moderate/independent voters as well. So what was the outcome of Reagan’s strategy?

Now as of today prior to any campaigning by Sarah Palin for 2012 and after a massive smear campaign by the left she garners just under 75% of the Republican vote and almost half of moderate/independent voters. Folks this is in no way a bad political situation to find yourself in 3 ½ years before the next presidential election, These numbers are close to where Reagan was in 1980. Also, Sarah Palin now has three years to build upon her political base and win over more Republicans, Moderates, and Independents and I believe she intends to do just that.

By: Andrea Tantaros

Someone please tell me — what’s the big gamble?

Let’s see: She might write a book, make millions, and raise even more for the GOP?

She could end up giving killer speeches on issues of national importance that bring the house down and command the attention of a national media that only our current commander in chief can boast?

Or wait — she might actually run for the White House and, er, um, lose? (That worked out horribly for Hillary, secretary of state, “18 million cracks” Clinton, Nobel Prize winner/filmmaker Al Gore, and icon Ronald Reagan, to name a few.)

Most amusing are those who attack her for abandoning her office, a novel idea in politics. If leaving a position for a “higher calling” articulates the definition of reckless abandonment, most of the Obama administration is worthy of similar blame, including the president himself.

So why is stepping down such a volatile venture?

Win, lose, or draw, Palin is, and likely will remain, a wildly popular figure in the Republican Party, a movement that currently lacks a leader and is devoid of direction (besides “the opposite of whatever the tall guy with the teleprompter is saying").

Despite the Obama administration’s many stumbles and impending economic implosion, no Republican has managed to emerge as the conductor of the constituency. The old guard of the party is over. So over.

Whether Palin decides to become the conservative Oprah, a best-selling author, the country’s first female president (or all of the above) she is the next generation, the new guard, and the GOP’s MVP.

From a messaging standpoint Palin is perfect. She is also the only one who can reasonably argue that she hasn't been part of either the Republican or Democratic web of Washington politics.

No bailouts, big spending, or Buenos Aires lust romps.

Her fundraising potential is potent. Her support is solid from the right. She is poised to fill a leadership vacuum and there is no better time than now, when Obama’s numbers (especially with independents) are at the precipice of plunging. The iron is scalding hot and Palin, ever the shrewd politician, knows exactly when to strike.

Remind me — where’s her exposure again?

The country took a risk on a well-scripted, super-smooth, inexperienced, Ivy-League fancy lad junior senator. Since taking office he’s quadrupled the deficit, conceded our liabilities abroad, shoved us to the brink of a crippled, European-style nanny state, all the while increasing the unemployment numbers to the cusp of double digits.

See? The plainspoken, big-haired, conservative hockey mom who uses hokey animal analogies doesn’t seem like such a bad bet after all.

We don’t know precisely how Palin's wager will play out, but we do know that she pulled the political ripcord to advance her career as a Republican rock star, move conservatism forward, and harness her power to propel the problematic Grand Old Party back to greatness.

Washington Times

By Toney Blankley

Professional politicians and political journalists don't waste energy on political corpses. They reserve their energy -- positive or negative -- for viable politicians.

Thus, an intriguing part of the Sarah Palin phenomenon is the intensity of response to her every word and move -- from both Republican and Democratic Party professionals and from the conventional media. The negative but sustained passion being expressed by the professional Washington political class against her tends to belie its almost unanimous assertion that she is washed up.

I happened to be on CNN on Friday just as the story was breaking of Mrs. Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska, and for the next hour, I was the only on-air guest -- Republican, Democrat, journalist, politician -- who was not overtly contemptuous and dismissive of Mrs. Palin and her political future. On Sunday, as a panelist on ABC's "This Week," I was similarly situated.

What is it about Mrs. Palin that elicits such furious bipartisan Washington dismissiveness? After all, the polls show her to be tied with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for the very early lead in the Republican primary. As an outspoken conservative with about 80 percent favorable rating amongst Republicans and a high-40s percentage favorable plurality among independents, objectively she should be seen as quite competitive nationally (compared to other Republicans, particularly given that Republicans generically are weak, and she has been so viciously targeted by the media).

Mrs. Palin draws by far the biggest crowds of any current politician other than, perhaps, the president. She was the only news phenomenon capable of knocking the Michael Jackson story off the cable news lineups. Impressively, while President George W. Bush was able to elicit a Bush derangement syndrome from liberal Democrats and President Obama has succeeded similarly with many conservatives, only Mrs. Palin has induced simultaneous derangement form both Republican and Democratic professionals.

At a time when governments around the world -- left, right and center -- are failing to gain the public confidence and even the winning Democratic Party in the United States struggles to match independents for the leading political category (while the Republican Party struggles to get to 25 percent to 30 percent market share), it might behoove those same party professionals who have been failing to connect their parties to the public to pause before calling Mrs. Palin an incompetent politician. Conventional wisdom may not be reliable in unconventional times -- or for unconventional politicians.

For instance, as the story was breaking Friday, fellow panelists were pointing out, on the air, how stupid Mrs. Palin was to put forward her big story on a late Friday afternoon before a three-day holiday weekend. Everyone "knows" one buries a story that way. It became my grim duty to remind my interlocutors -- in case they had not noticed -- that all the cable news shows were dropping their programming to switch to wall-to-wall coverage of the Palin announcement and that we were, at that moment, telling a national audience that the story we were discussing was being buried. The story persisted and expanded over the weekend, and my guess would be that if any political topic came up at America's millions of Fourth of July backyard barbecue parties -- it probably was about Sarah Palin. So, who's the fool?

Well, I have had the honor of working for two politicians before they rose to their heights (as well as during their heights) -- Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. And though they were vastly different men, both were considered, for different reasons, to be beyond the political pale in their earlier political years. If only Mr. Reagan could behave more like George Herbert Walker Bush, and if only Newt Gingrich could behave more like Bob Michel, maybe they could succeed better at elective politics.

So, last weekend, the professionals were confidently sneering that Mrs. Palin had made a fatal mistake by giving up the governorship of Alaska, because everyone knows an aspiring candidate for higher office clings to his or her current office while running for the next one.

Well, I'm not so sure being an incumbent is an advantage if the world seems to be going to hell and government is seen to be at least part of the cause for that journey. And though many a conventional politician might be seen as a quitter if he resigned from office -- I have a very strong hunch Mrs. Palin is constitutionally incapable of being seen as a quitter. Because she is not. She is constantly taking on the biggest challenge on her horizon.

Now, I am not endorsing her or predicting she will run or that if she runs she is likely to win. Let's wait a couple of years before getting to those questions. If Mr. Obama is seen by the public to be a great success as president in 2012, he probably will get re-elected.

However, if he is not seen as a great success, the public may be looking for a straight-talking candidate from the heartland who calls for and truly believes in limited government, maximum personal freedom and fiscal responsibility.

They may be listening for someone who knows how to talk to us - rather than at us or down to us. They also may respond favorably to a candidate who does not respond favorably to the Washington political class - nor it to her.