Daily Caller: A.G. Gancarski on Romney v. Palin

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At The Daily Caller, freelance journalist A.G. Gancarski opines that Despite Team Romney's dirty tricks, Gov. Palin will likely be the 2012 GOP nominee:

If only Romney had anything resembling the “common touch.” Those who remember his visit to Jacksonville for an MLK Day parade, where he attempted to lead a crowd of people in a chant of “Who Let the Dogs Out? Who? Who?”, know too well that Romney’s presentation was that of a genuine throwback, as unabashedly patrician and “elitist” as George H.W. Bush in 1980. He broke a cardinal rule of retail politics: never let the people believe you are superior to them. Americans don’t vote for role models anymore. They vote for people with whom they identify.

Which is where Sarah Palin comes in.

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When Romney functionaries were quoted in TIME recently savaging Palin, saying “she’s not a serious human being” and “if she’s standing up there in a debate and the answers are more than fifteen seconds long, she’s in trouble,” they revealed something fundamental about what the Romney operation will do to defeat Palin. They clearly have no issue with taking memes popularized on the left by the late night talk show troupe and the Keith Olbermanns of the world and using them many months before the first primary votes will be cast. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily. This in all likelihood will be Mitt Romney’s last campaign, and so things will be said (especially by operatives) that can’t be taken back. Things that will be used against Palin should she become the 2012 Republican nominee.

And she likely will. Mitt Romney is the Willy Loman of Republican Presidential politics. Liked, but not well liked, he is the perpetual salesman, with artfully darkened hair, a ready smile, and shrewd eyes, forever looking to close the deal. But in terms of the Republican nomination, even if Mitt plays the perfect game with the insiders yet again, he won’t do any better than he did against the flaccid field in 2008. The grassroots doesn’t like Mitt and isn’t going to learn to like him. And these, fortunately for Palin, who is as much a totem as she is a candidate, are grassroots times.

So even if she isn’t a “serious human being”, the fact remains that people identify with her in ways they can’t with Romney. Incapable of reinventing himself, Romney thus is consigned to a fate very similar to the one he suffered in 2008.

Read this opinion piece unabridged at The DC.

- JP