Varadarajan: 'The Palin Primaries are now behind us. Make way for the Palin Midterms.'

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The Palin Primaries are behind us, and the GOP establishment, as is its habit, is itching to set sail for the center to try to attract more votes. But Hoover Institution fellow Tunku Varadarajan advises in a Daily Beast op-ed that the GOP should continue to chart a course to starboard:

These have been the Palin Primaries, a fact rammed home deliciously by Alaska’s Republican voters in their “refudiation,” as of this writing, of Lisa Murkowski. What a potent, irrepressible woman Palin is...

The question facing the Republicans is how best to deploy Palin’s energy for November—in effect, how best to channel the vim of the Tea Party. Midterm elections, as a rule, are base-versus-base battles: Both parties will spare no quarter or trick to get their faithful to turn out. For this task, Palin is as close to an indispensable figure as the Republicans have.

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Palin and the Tea Party now command a right to dictate terms, and having been sidelined once already (in 2008, with disastrous consequences for the party), she is unlikely to be so easily governed again. After all, she secured for John McCain his Senate primary in Arizona, by endorsing him over the more Tea Party-friendly J.D. Hayworth. After that, and after Alaska in particular, she has acquired a quite daunting aura.

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But what about “independents” — won’t Palin make the GOP much less attractive to them? I put the question to John Zogby, the pollster, who told me: “It is important to be reminded just who the ‘independents’ are. Almost half of them describe themselves as politically moderate and lean heavily toward President Obama and the Democrats.” So this group, it would seem, would spurn the GOP in November, with or without a Palin thrust.

“Of the remaining 52 percent,” Zogby continued, “two in three describe themselves as politically ‘conservative’ but weary of Republicans on issues like spending, civil liberties, and the war in Iraq during the Bush and Republican congressional years. So a conservative message can win their support except they don’t trust the Republicans.”

That would, of course, be the Republican Establishment; and here, precisely, is where Palin can make a difference: I am prepared to wager that many of these “conservative independents” have some inclination toward the Tea Party and its small-government message. So staying “on message” — especially on the need for fiscal conservatism — is more likely to win their vote than a Republican lurch to the center. And since any such lurch will have the inevitable effect of driving the base to distraction, I see the GOP embracing a version of the Palin-Tea Party message.

Read the full Varadarajan opinion piece here.

- JP