Republicans Split Over Running Mate's Intentions for 2012

This election isn't over for another eight days and the next one is four years away, but the question being asked with some urgency is: will Sarah Palin run for president in 2012?

A faint, but audible, chant can be heard among her supporters, to paraphrase the oil drilling mantra on the campaign trail: "Run, baby, run!" They see her as the leader to steer the conservative movement out of its malaise, a politician who can excite the party faithful in a mirror image of what Barack Obama did for the Democrats.

Should Obama win on November 4, and many conservatives are resigned to that, the chorus is likely to grow. But so too will the voices of opposition, with their own Palin chant: "Get back to Alaska!"

Here too the rumblings are audible. Over the weekend, advisers to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, were briefing more than one news outlet that Palin was "going rogue", pursuing her own political interests with an eye on 2012 rather than concentrating on McCain's stab at the top job.

"She is a diva," one unnamed adviser told CNN. "She is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party." The Politico website carried the views of other anonymous McCain aides who attacked Palin for being "green", sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain for his campaign strategy.

Palin has recently broken with the McCain campaign on several points. She has publicly chided the decision to abandon the race in Michigan and questioned why Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has been treated as out of bounds.

Such outspokenness is just one way in which Palin has divided opinion across the country. She has emerged as a singularly charismatic but also divisive politician, splitting the electorate into those who see her as the epitome of small-town America or small-minded America.

That division cuts deep within the conservative movement and reflects a basic disagreement over the future direction of the Republican party. In the soul-searching that would follow a McCain defeat much of the debate may center on the personality of Palin.

Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, is an admirer of Palin who thinks she will stand for president in 2012. "She has a window, as a rock star of the right. She's been given an opportunity in terms of national exposure and high name recognition that many ambitious politicians would kill for," he told the Guardian.

Lowry first met Palin in August last year when a group of senior National Review pundits went to visit her in Juneau, capital of Alaska, on a cruise organized by the magazine. An earlier cruise earned her the admiration of influential figures from Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard including William Kristol, who also writes for the New York Times, and the magazine's editor Fred Barnes. Other important Palin advocates include the talkshow host Rush Limbaugh, several presenters on Murdoch's Fox News and leading members of her Christian evangelical alliance.

In the opposing corner are other conservatives, notably Kristol's fellow New York Times columnist David Brooks who sees the Alaskan governor as part of a drift within the movement towards anti-intellectualism. "Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all - men who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking," he has written referring to Palin. "Now those attributes bow down before the common touch."

The image of Palin as anti-intellectual emerged partly as a result of her disastrous TV interviews in which she was unable to answer such simple questions as which newspapers she reads, and partly as a result of the lampooning of Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. Palin has also courted the persona, accentuating her rustic accent on the campaign trail and talking disparagingly about Obama's "elitism".

Michael Franc, an expert in government relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, thinks Palin has thrown into relief a crucial post-election debate for Republicans: should they continue on the populist path laid by Ronald Reagan, or aggressively expand their support base in the interests of electoral success.

"The problem is that Palin's populism appeals to only 45% of the electorate at most and something has to change to get the party back up above 50%" he said. Demographic changes in America have seen the rise of an electoral group of highly educated professionals repelled by populist arguments and open to Democratic advances, Franc added. Palin must appeal to them if she is serious about standing in 2012.

Lowry agreed that to have a serious shot at the White House Palin has to fill out her political profile.

"If she tries to float by on her celebrity and charm she will squander the great opportunity she has been given. But if she bones up on what Sarah Palin conservatism means, then she will be a formidable contender," he said.

The other priority for 2012 would be to keep her profile high - not an easy task from the media wilderness of Alaska. Help is likely to be at hand from media outlets keen to embrace her celebrity.

But a media career may also work against her search for seriousness, said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "She needs to build up her political gravitas which she has seemed to lack, and doing a TV talk show may not be the best way," he said.