Michael Barone explains John Ellis' strange blog post

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We didn't quite know what to make of this post by John Ellis on his Ellisblog! website when we first read it. This part of the post seemed clear enough:

The basic math is simple. If she gets half of the female primary voters and caucus attenders to support her, then she standing starts at roughly 25% of the total vote. Throw in a third of the male vote and she's at roughly 40%. Forty percent wins the Iowa caucuses, handily.

Which then sets up New Hampshire as the place where the not-Sarah candidate emerges. In all likelihood, that will be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who finished second in NH in 2008 and who will spend whatever it takes to win there in 2012.

Assuming that the race is then reduced to Palin and Romney, the next critical state primary is South Carolina. At that point, I don't think the specifics really matter. The fact is that the Republican Party of 2012 is not going to nominate a Mormon as its standard bearer. And the more important fact is that the base of the Republican Party doesn't just favor Sarah Palin, they love her. She is their standard bearer. And they will not -- this time around -- be denied.

But Ellis goes off world with this concluding paragraph:

What this means is two things: (1) the pressure on former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to run for the GOP presidential nomination will increase as the year moves along, and (2) the likelihood of a strong independent party candidacy increases as Palin's support within the GOP broadens. Oh, and it also means one other thing: President Obama is not doomed.

Jeb Bush? Ellis had us scratching our heads in wonder of where that notion came from. Fortunately for us, Michael Barone was able to put it all in perspective:

Why is this interesting? Well, John Ellis, with whom I worked on Fox News’s 2000 election night coverage, is Jeb Bush’s first cousin.

To quote Monty Python, "Say no more. Say no more."

- JP

Barone: Palin running even with Obama?

Michael Barone, in his Beltway Confidential column in the Friday Washington Examiner, looks at recent polling results from Rasmussen. With a 3 percent margin of error, the poll essentially shows Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin each tied with President Obama in head to head matchups:

"I don’t think these numbers are anything like a reliable indicator of how the 2012 election cycle will unfold; they’re more like a referendum on Obama today, and not a particularly complimentary one. But it’s interesting that three Republican politicians, each with his or her own liabilities, are still running about even with Obama."

 What seems most significant to us about the more recent polls is that the trend shows Obama in decline and Sarah Palin on the rise. There are many political variables which can change between now and 2012, but it's interesting to track the numbers along the way. The critical variable among them, in our opinion, is what the unemployment picture will look like when campaigning begins in earnest for the 2012 elections. If it is still in double digits, the president will be in a world of hurt.

- JP