2012: GOP battle of the TV stars?

It seems you can’t escape Sarah Palin these days. The former Alaska governor and failed Republican vice presidential candidate is everywhere: making a book tour, hosting a family travelogue on cable television. It seems the media is just fascinated with her. Yes, I said the media. With her stardom she is fast becoming a media darling and it is in turn driving up her popularity. The media push must certainly be the reason for her star rising as high because otherwise she has appeared to be dumb as a post. Her shrill, whiny voice is enough to make a groundhog burrow into the Earth’s inner core. Now, it seems she is thinking about a presidential run in 2012. Big surprise there.

Palin might have someone with whom to match her flake-to-flake in a race for the GOP nomination. That potential candidate would be none other than Donald Trump, or as he is simply known: “The Donald.”

Trump was on the national and international scene while Palin was changing colleges like Jeff Gordon’s NASCAR pit crew changes tires. The Donald has long been known for his shrewd business acumen and collecting trophy wives. Media darling would perhaps not be the most accurate description for Trump but he has logged many hours on various TV shows. He almost seems synonymous with Larry King. Of course, The Donald too has had a TV show and a quite popular one in “The Apprentice.” He has even given birth to a catch-phrase “You’re fired.”

It seems like there are no shortage of folks willing to become 2012 GOP standard bearer. The one who does must carefully walk the rolling log down the river of political treachery. The base of the Republican Party has become those of the right, the evangelicals, the Tea Party, and all manner of social conservative. But that sector alone will not beat the Democratic nominee who will — unless he is found out to really be Kenyan — Barack Obama.

A successful Republican presidential candidate will likely require someone else other than the GOP’s time-honored “good party man” pick for nominee. It will, as my Daddy used to say, “take a different breed of dog,” to bring in enough of the disparate GOP factions, indpendents and disillusioned Democrats to beat Obama. Oh, and when I say disillusioned Dems I don’t mean the far left wing because if they don’t vote for Obama or not vote at all, they might vote for the left-leaning flavor of the presidential campaign such as another Ralph Nader run.

I don’t think Sarah Palin has a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning. A poll  result I heard today said a match between Palin and Obama would put the incumbent back in office by something like a 55-45 margin. That’s today though. We still have a ways from November 2012. Two years is geological time in presidential races. If she does win the presidency I might just have to head for deep in the Sabine River bottoms, somewhere that hasn’t been cut out by development. I will definitely have to, as that great singer/philosopher John Prine says: “Blow up your TV.” And probably my radio and most likely avoid all contact with the first woman president on any kind of medium because that screechy, whiny voice might just make me follow the ground hog into the Earth’s innermost bowels.

Trump, flake that he is, has proved himself to be one hell of a bidness man, as we Texans are wont to say. And we Texans know from personal experience that only good business sense does a good elected official make.

A race between the two for the GOP nominee for president might just be a good thing for their party.

Pitting Trump against Palin for the presidential contest might finally make the Republican Party define who it is and what it is they really are. Is this the party of Ronald Reagan, Bill Buckley, Richard Nixon, and others who saw the GOP as a conduit for capitalism above all else? Or will the end result be a Republicanism that is more like a Carrie Nations-led Women’s Christian Temperance Union when it comes to social issues with hardly a footprint left of a federal government?

It will depend. I thought the GOP would be split apart by now but the Tea Party helped it survive another election cycle. Now if what has been wrought and whether the candidates of the next election cycle can continue to hold the Republican Party together remain the big political questions.