Sarah Palin 2012? Not so fast.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but things are looking mighty grim for GOP ticket in the waning days of the campaign. The electoral math is exceptionally daunting for McCain & co. Something dramatic will have to happen to give him the presidency, and by that, I mean voter repression like we've never seen before or some sort of horrible scandal - not likely. A Bin Laden video tape won't cut it this time around. Both national and statewide polls show Obama ahead of McCain by wide margins, and the Obama campaign boasts a far superior ground game to the flailing Big Mac campaign. Additionally, early voting numbers in states like North Carolina, Nevada, and Georgia all indicate the Dems are coming out with far more enthusiasm than weary Republicans. Factor all this together, and you could see a landslide Obama victory paired with massive Democratic pickups in the House and Senate.

Naturally, the finger pointing has already begun, with Republican operatives hurling expletives all over the place. One of the big new talking points on the right (and elsewhere, really) is that Sarah Palin is increasingly "going rogue" to avoid being the fall girl for the defeat, and to position herself to become the GOP nominee in '12. That's a lovely story, and I don't doubt that she's trying to distance herself from this disasterous situation. But, I think the odds of Palin being the next GOP nominee is 0.1%. Why? Well:

1) Her appeal is really restricted to the base.

And that base just isn't what it was. If you recall, way back in the Republican primaries, Mike Huckabee essentially swept the Bible Belt, winning Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas (granted, he was the Governor there), Louisiana, Alabama, and Kansas. He received the vast majority of Evangelical support throughout. And it wasn't close to enough. To win in a changing country, the next GOP nominee will have to reach out beyond the party's core.

Palin's appeal is slightly different than Huckabee's, but both have the same flaws; very little appeal to Centrists or disaffected Democrats once their positions become fleshed out. And Palin has other problems. Her initial roll-out was botched, allowing her lack of international experience and substantive knowledge to be on full display without allowing her strengths other than "being likable" to shine. If I'd been running that campaign, Palin would have been out there giving policy addresses on energy, special needs children, and government reform from Week 1 instead of shielding her from the media. The country tends to be forgiving of gaffes (see: Biden, Joe) when they feel the gaffer is better than that. So a few mistakes on details would have likely been dismissed as semantics. But when the gaffes become defining characteristics...

It's possible (possible, not probable) that if Palin hadn't been chosen and had spent the next few years boning up on policy positions that affect the other 49 states, she might have been a fine candidate. She's certainly an able politician, and she would have had more control over crafting her image. But since she was thrust upon the American people, we've been force-fed more Palin than most of us care to stomach. As such, I think opinions of her as a potential leader of the free world are already too damaged to allow for a succesful run. It seems unlikely to me that many of the conservatives who have jumped ship would consider her the optimal choice in four years.

2) She's just not that strong of a candidate

While I don't think Palin is as stupid as her performance on the campaign trail suggests, there's also little indication that she's got the intellect or thirst for knowledge that could make an inspiring candidate. After George W. Bush, I believe the country is taking the President's brainpower much more seriously than before, and Palin's incomprehensible interview with Katie Couric indicated someone without any depth. "Being like me" may be appealing to a small sliver of the population, but most folks want their leader to be BETTER than them.

I've also yet to see her spout anything but GOP talking points on the economy or Iraq (in fact, before she was tapped as McCain's running mate, she had said she hoped we had an exit strategy in place; now it's all white flag, white flag). Does she have real convictions about this stuff? I don't believe so, and that's fine for the Governor of Alaska. It's not OK for a serious Presidential candidate.

3) Her views are out of touch with most of the country

There was one moment in her cartoony VP debate with Joe Biden that I thought Sarah Palin spoke with passion and candor; that was on the topic of Gay Marriage. Unlike everything else (the aforementioned talking points), it was clearly something that she has a strong view on and had put some thought into before August 29th. I'm sure the same is true of abortion, creationism, and, to a lesser extent, Global Warming.

Unfortunately for Palin, most of her views on these subjects are way off the mainstream. Not only does Palin oppose abortion rights, she opposes them in the case of rape and incest. She's been largely able to avoid talking about this as the VP nominee, but she won't have that luxury if she's at the top of the ticket. She'll have to explain to national audiences why the anti-Government party should be able to require someone's daughter by LAW to have their rapist's baby. That's a tough sell. Similarly, she'll have to tell the country what she would do about teaching sex education in schools (she opposes it). These views are likely to make the 24% of the population that approves of Bush' job performance giddy, and the other 76% nauseous (give or take a few percent, of course).

4) The country is changing before our eyes

John McCain has never been particularly liked by his own party. So, why did he win the GOP nomination by March 4th? Simple; the past eight years have been run by a "true conservative," and they've been an unmitigated disaster. The country chose the candidate who was perceive as far more moderate than the other choices (whether McCain actually qualifies as anything close to a moderate is a discussion for another time). Assuming Obama wins and governs as a Centrist, which I expect and hope, will the country opt for an extremist in '12? I just can't see it. Voters under the age of 30 identify as Democrats by a 20 point margin. That's an enormous problem for the Republicans, as they're in danger of getting swept into irrelevancy if they don't reform their image. McCain had the chance to do this by picking someone he really wanted like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge, saying "F you, base; this is what I think is best for America. Country First!", and crafting the GOP how he wants it. Sure, he'd have met resistance from blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity, but he would have gotten their votes over Obama anyway, and he would have been far more appealing to the large portion of America that sits in the middle. Moreover, he would have said - by his actions, not words - that he's not George Bush, and he won't govern like him. He chose not to do so, and we're seeing the results in the polls (and, I hope, on November 4th).

Will America really swing all the way back to the right in 3-4 years? I just don't see it. And if they did, a candidate like Bobby Jindal (who I disagree with on 90% of issues, but actually somewhat like) may be a better choice than Palin anyway. Alaska's Governor has a lot of image reshaping to do if she wants to be more than a major player in the GOP's beloved internal circle, and become an appealing figure to the country at large.