Ed Ross: Clinton vs. Palin in 2012? Stranger things have happened.

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At the Daily Caller, what Ed Ross finds significant about the recent PPP poll showing that three out of four Republicans beat President Obama in hypothetical matchups is that the fourth -- Sarah Palin -- has him tied up at 46 all. The significance is in the irony that Democrats and Vichy Republicans have written off the GOP's 2008 vice presidential candidate as unlikely to win the 2012 election, but the results of the PPP survey and other polls belie that, says Ross. With each passing day, the Mama Grizzly In Chief is increasingly demonstrating her viability as a candidate. Ross had written five months ago that "There is a path for Sarah Palin to become the 45th President of the United States, if she navigates it effectively, and it’s not just wishful thinking." Now he sees others coming around to his way of thinking on the question.

Ross is intrigued by a potential matchup between Hillary Clinton and Governor Palin. The obvious media draw would be the prospect of two women battling each other for the White House. But Ross defies the conventional wisdom against, this time declaring that among the prospective GOP candidates, it’s Gov. Palin that could be the most difficult for Secretary Clinton to beat:

Clinton’s strategy -- or Obama’s for that matter -- running against Romney, Gingrich, or Huckabee is to portray them as the same old white-male establishment Republicans the party has been offering up for decades, that they represent the past, not the future, and the failed policies of the George W. Bush administration. In 2008 Obama used that approach effectively against John McCain, and Clinton can use it effectively against them.

Women voters will play an important role in the 2012 with or without a woman on the ballot. Concerns about the economy, health care reform, and other pocketbook issues have them very concerned. More so than in past years, it is women that could cast the deciding votes.

Because the majority of women traditionally vote Democratic, that gives Hillary the advantage with women if she’s running against a middle-aged white-male Republican. If Sarah Palin topped the Republican ticket, however, that calculus doesn’t necessarily hold. The ranks of conservative women are growing, they make up a majority of Tea Party supporters, and many Independent and some Democratic women are drawn to Palin.

Past polling on women’s attitudes toward Clinton or Palin doesn’t necessarily predict how they might vote in 2012 if these two women were on the ballot. Voters won’t view Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin through the same lenses they viewed them through in 2008. Liberalism’s excesses and failures during Obama’s term will have diminished the value of the liberal “Hillary” brand, and the left’s attempt to portray Sarah Palin as dumb and uninformed will have been exposed, as it largely has been already, for what it is—fear of Palin’s appeal.

2012 is still geological ages away in political terms as the cliché goes, but the possibility of a Clinton-Palin contest is not far fetched. Both women are major political forces in their respective parties, and both have their eyes on the Oval Office. Stranger things have happened in American politics.

Read the full Ross op-ed at The DC.

- JP