Sarah Palin is enormously popular.
She also is enormously unpopular — even among many on the right.
Sarah Palin is a good watch on TV. She also is erratic. And slightly hyper. And full of contradictions.
Sarah Palin is good looking to many men. And she is “a bit loopy” to many other men — and women, too.
Sarah Palin is a leader of many conservatives. But to other conservatives, she ruined herself with her sudden — and inexplicable — resignation last summer.
Many wonder, “if we invest our hopes in her, will she just up and quit one day when the going gets tough?”
She is glib. But to others she speaks only in generalities and does not seem to really know anything.
Some see her as a breath of fresh air. Others see her as George W. Bush in a skirt.
All of the above is part of the fascination with Sarah Palin. And the conundrum for the Republican Party.
If she decides to run for the GOP nomination in 2012 it will rip the Republican Party — and the conservative movement — apart. Perhaps forever.
All at a time when we must defeat Obama. The country cannot take a second Obama term; we are barely going to survive his first term.
But there are many who worry that Palin on the GOP ticket will send independent voters — who have as of now totally abandoned Obama — scurrying reluctantly back to him.
And many others just do not think she is up to the job of being president of the United States.
The 2012 GOP presidential race will revolve around her. And her alone.
If she runs, no other candidate will get any “oxygen” — and the fund-raising will be skewed in her favor, too. All the attention will be on her — and on no one else.
She has 25 percent of the hard right who adore her. But that is all she has. That bloc might win some caucuses and primaries for her. And it will skew the remaining votes and divide them up among other GOP candidates.
In sum, she is an unexploded IED thrown into the 2012 race. The collateral damage is impossible to calculate.
If she does not run, then the race is wide open. And, as of now, we do not have a great candidate on the scene. But there is still time for one to appear.
If she does run, the Republican Party will be ripped apart over her candidacy. And the eventual winner — if it is someone other than her — will have a wrecked party and a discredited, divided conservative movement behind him.
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