Politico notes that even though Sarah Palin tops polls of Republican voters’ preferred pick for the party’s nominee in 2012, her support comes mainly from hard-core right-wing conservatives while her approval rating among moderates and centrists has plummeted.
What makes the article interesting is this statement from Richard Land, who was one of Palin’s earliest backers touting her candidacy way back in early August and constantly gushing about her during the campaign, suddenly suggesting that the Right doesn’t “have all their hopes and dreams vested” in her future:
The GOP intra-party debate over Palin has become a proxy for the larger question of her party’s future, and conservative chieftains like Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land fear that attacks on Palin are at times veiled swipes at the party base.
“It would be a mistake to say that social conservatives have all their hopes and dreams vested in Sarah Palin,” Land said, but he added Palin “does have the one thing you can’t coach, charisma,” and continues to have “star power” with conservatives.
Now Land has a long history of trying to portray himself as more of a pundit than a Religious Right hack and setting himself up as perhaps a more sensible alternative to the likes of James Dobson. In that capacity, he often serves as a moderately reliable bellwether of the Right’s views on political issues, such as his early adoration of Fred Thompson which then quickly evaporated when it was clear that his campaign was going nowhere or his lukewarm support of John McCain’s candidacy that was kicked into overdrive by his choice of Palin as his running mate.
So it is interesting to see Land start backing away ever-so-slowly from the idea that Palin represents the future of the Religious Right movement in American politics, presumably out of concern that Palin’s future itself might be rather limited, as Ed Rollins points out:
Ed Rollins, who ran presidential bids for Republicans including Ronald Reagan and Huckabee, argued that “independents are something she can focus on later.”
In the end, though, Rollins expects that Palin “will be very similar to [Dan] Quayle.”
“When he started to run, [Quayle] got nowhere,” Rollins said. “The potential is there [for Palin] but out of 10 weeks she had two good weeks.” For the 2012 race, “she’s now not starting at the top but starting at the bottom,” he said, adding that Palin would have to campaign for years in Iowa and New Hampshire to mount a viable campaign.
