Here comes Sarah Palin!

public opinion is now tilted against the idea [of] voting for Palin in 2012, 53% say they would not. Just 9% say they would definitely vote for her; another 37% say they would consider it.

--Washington Post, “Behind the Numbers”

Despite being characterized by many as a divisive force in her party and the nation, Americans are much more likely to give Palin a positive rating (47%) than another prominent female leader -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (28%). . . Palin's favorable [is] up 9% over last July's reading of 38%. . . Moreover, 61% think Palin has been treated unfairly by the press. . . [Republicans give] Palin the highest favorable ratings (70%) amid a group of other possible contenders for the GOP nomination, including Mike Huckabee (63%), Mitt Romney (60%) and Newt Gingrich (58%).

--Fox News Poll, 11.18.09

Palinism works by draping hard-right policy in a winning personal story and just-folks rhetoric. Its genius rests in its ability to magically absorb inconvenient facts and mutually contradictory realities into an unassailable personal narrative. . . the bedeviling thing about Sarah Palin, and the secret to her success [is] neither the left nor the right can get enough of her.

--Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, Going Rouge: Sarah Palin--An American Nightmare

Michelle Bachmann, a smarter, better-educated (her crazy comes in paragraphs) and more photogenic Sarah Palin, is definitely somebody to watch. The big question is whether indulging lunacy will do more damage to the Republican Party or the country. Nobody familiar with 20th-century history can be entirely confident that reason will prevail. In troubled times, even great nations can go stark, raving mad. [emphasis added]

--Gene Lyons, “Salon”

[In “Slate,”] one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor's writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book: “The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”

Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, "That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate." But soon, the original contributor confessed: "I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It's taken from the first paragraph of Dreams From My Father, written by Barack Obama."

--Jonah Goldberg, Chicago Tribune

both the national media and Democrats are likely to keep Palin in the spotlight as long as possible. For the media, the former governor of Alaska is a celebrity with an "interesting" family, while for Democrats, she is an easy target - a political lightweight of uncertain substance, who drives "tea party" conservatives into a euphoric frenzy but divides the GOP into two very different camps.

--Stu Rothenberg, “Rothenberg Report”

For Sarah Palin, with her personality and history, to tell Rush Limbaugh that Republicans should welcome primary fights within their own ranks is hardly surprising. As much as it may pain her many critics, she also has a lot of history on her side. . .Palin. . .got to be governor of Alaska by knocking off incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in a Republican primary in 2006. When she told Limbaugh, "What I appreciate about the Republican Party (is) we have contested, aggressive, competitive primaries," she had that fight in mind.

--David Broder, Washington Post

In Alaska, Palin didn't run as a culture warrior. She focused on issues with overwhelming public support: ethics reform, a revised oil tax, and more competition and transparency in the effort to build a natural gas pipeline. She took the conservative vote for granted and focused on winning independents and even some Democrats.

The 2006 Palin model looks a lot like the approach that Virginia's next governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, used to win his election last week. It means applying conservative principles to problems like the economy, health care, and out-of-control federal spending. It means addressing voter concern that big government and big business are in cahoots, heaping expensive burdens on small businesses and individual entrepreneurs.

--Matthew Continetti, author of The Persecution of Sarah Palin