Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:13 pm
Conservative columnist, and Fox News contributor, Charles Krauthammer was on the network today dismissing Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for the presidency in 2012. He said, “She is not a serious candidate for the presidency.” The Vanity Fair story has opened up the GOP’s mixed feelings towards Palin even on Fox News.
Here is the video:
Krauthammer said, “She has star power without any doubt. She has an extremely devoted following, but she is not a serious candidate for the presidency. She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn’t. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won’t work. It could work for eight weeks if you are the number two candidate, as she was last year, but even so she got singed a lot in that campaign. You can not sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you are a candidate for the presidency.”
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Although I disagree with his political views, Krauthammer is on the money when it comes to Palin’s post campaign approach. Palin seems to think that she can fight with talk show hosts and charm her way to the presidency. Sarah Palin is so divisive that she needs to reinvent her campaign approach. A majority of Americans believe that she is not qualified to be president. If she is going to be a serious candidate, she needs to address these concerns.
The Republican Party is so completely devoid of talent that Palin could very well win the 2012 nomination, but currently she does not appear to have a base in the Republican Party. Romney is popular with the fiscal conservatives. Huckabee’s base is with evangelicals, but I think that this is the group that Palin is targeting.
I do believe it is a little soon to write Palin off, but it will be interesting to see how her shtick plays in a long Republican primary. I think she is going to discover that being front and center in a national yearlong campaign is not the same as running for governor in Alaska, or being dropped into the McCain campaign for 8 weeks. Even if Palin would win the nomination, all she will have earned is the chance to be demolished by the Obama machine in November.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
