Yet another article examining Sarah Palin's plummeting popularity. Can't have too many of those, now can we?

"Remember me? I used to actually be more than just a punchline. At least I think I was!"

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Dick Cheney is just the latest conservative icon to join the chorus of voices who recognize that the selection of Sarah Palin for vice president was a major-league mistake. The man who first brought Palin to John McCain, Steve Schmidt, famously came to that conclusion before the 2008 campaign even ended. Now Team Romney doesn’t even want her to be seen at the same podium in Tampa. And in perhaps the unkindest cut, Mindy Meyer, the Legally Blonde-inspired 22-year-old conservative New York State Senate candidate known in the tabloids as “the Magenta Yenta,” dismissed Palin by saying, “She's just so oblivious to the issues.” 

There’s a reason for this broad-based cooling of affections. In the past four years, something like an organic consensus has emerged. Doubts that began with talk of “death panels” only grew with mutterings about “blood libel.” Over time, the reflexive Republican impulse to defend her honor became replaced with exhaustion and embarrassment. 

Even some of the most devoted Palinites are left wondering what they were thinking. 

Take David Kelly of Colorado Springs, the one-time treasurer of the Draft Sarah 2012 committee. In 2009, when I interviewed him, Kelly believed that Palin “represents the silent majority of this nation ... she invokes what conservative America’s all about: God and Country.” Now he’s come to a different conclusion. 

“You may be shocked to hear that I am no longer a Palin supporter,” he told me over the phone. “I think what attracted me to her in the first place was the fact that she’d say things that you’d hear at the Thanksgiving table when your relatives are there and go, ‘There’s my crazy aunt, but she nails it every time.’” (Yeah, and who DOESN'T want their crazy aunt to run the country?)


But now? “I realize that she’s another Republican talking head,” says Kelly, who is today a proud Ron Paul supporter. “I don’t think she has the caliber to make a great leader for this nation in these times ... She’s off my radar. It’s a sad statement.” 

Yes, it’s been a bad breakup. But signs of trouble were there for a long time. In December 2010, just one month after the Tea Party triumph, an ABC poll found that “59 percent of voters said they wouldn’t cast a ballot for Palin and only 8 percent of Americans said they’d ‘definitely’ vote for her.” 

Almost a year later, in September 2011, a McClatchy-Marist poll found that “by 72 percent to 24 percent, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents do not want Palin to run for president in 2012. Even among Tea Party supporters—a group that likes Palin—68 percent do not want her to run.” 

The polarization has faded in favor of a general understanding that for all her talents, Palin was not ready for presidential prime time. (Personally I think allowing that she had any real "talents" is also an overestimation.)


This new consensus is a vindication for her critics, especially Republican skeptics like Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, who described Palin as an “attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.” In the hothouse atmosphere of 2008, Parker’s statement earned her some 20,000 emails, many of this vintage: “You’re not one of us, you’re one of THEM, the liberal lovers, the flag-burners, country haters, the ones who want to kill god and put Stalin in his place and see this nation destroyed by a sea of brown people and gays.” 

Now even such inspired bile seems like a museum piece. Absent the chance that she could be a heartbeat away from the presidency (or a candidate herself), Palin no longer stirs the kind of passion that sold magazines and divided families.

And for that we have a lot of wonderful people to thank, such as Joe McGinniss, Geoffrey Dunn, Frank Bailey, Steve Schmidt, Levi Johnston, Nicolle Wallace, many hard working bloggers, and of course, the most helpful one of all, Sarah Palin herself.  Because let's face it, if she had not been such a HUGELY untalented  screw up she might very well have actually beaten the GOP field, and be over in Poland embarrassing our country right now instead of "Mitt the Twit."

Personally I have enjoyed the show. Once I realized she had no hope of ever posing a real threat of getting the nomination, I just sat back and watched the slow motion train wreck with a sense of fascination and accomplishment.

P.S. By the way the article also explains how Bill Clinton's reputation has only improved since he left the White House, and that is worth reading as well.