She’s Coming Back and What Will We Do Now?

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Oh my God! What’s happening now? I don’t know how to break this to you, but the buzz in the Beltway is that if there’s no clear winner in the Republican primary race by June it may lead to a “brokered convention.”

What’s that you say?  (pregnant pause.) I really don’t know how to break it to you  gently so I guess I’ll just have to plunge right in and say it outright – SARAH  PALIN!!!

I’m not kidding. At this point, it’s only being talked about in dark corners, but this nightmare scenario may actually materialize if neither Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum can break away from the pack and gather the magic 1,144 votes they will need at the Republican convention in Tampa to take the Grand Old Party’s (GOP’s) nomination.

If that doesn’t put you off your Wheaties I don’t know what will. I mean wasn’t Palin finished? Kaput?  Dead, at least politically? Apparently not.  And the Alaska Barracuda may come back for Act 2 and no writer less than Shakespeare or Hunter S. Thompson could do justice to that. Fear and loathing, indeed. Mind you Steven Harper might welcome the advent of Palin. He’s always been a big fan of the American military, George W. Bush and the like. As for the rest of the world, we all better take a Valium and pray.

After “Super Tuesday” this week, Romney had 458 committed delegates to Santorum’s 203 and  Gingrich’s 118 which puts the former Massachusetts governor well in the lead, but barely a third of the way to winner take all status,  which is not a strong position considering how much time is left between now and June. 

Even the devout Santorum, though well back of Romney, could conceivably win because he’s winning states in the South that nobody thought he’d win and he claims to have a personal pipeline to the Creator. One celestial  call to God up in heaven  and it would be all over for Romney and the second American Catholic president would be ready to move into the Oval Office, or so Santorum would have us believe.

But what if the all-powerful Creator in all his/her/its majesty declines Santorum’s prayer? What indeed? It’s at this point we have to go from the sublime to the ridiculous and consider the rifle-toting, moose-gutting, Queen of the North Slope and potential first female president of the Excited States of America.

It fairly boggles the mind!  In fact when recently asked by Fox TV what she would do if there’s a deadlocked GOP convention, Palin replied: “I would do anything I could do to help.” That’s big of her. “Help” from Sarah Palin is about the last thing the U.S. or the world needs now. Yet it’s happened before.

In the 1924 Democratic convention, it took 102 ballots before John W. Davis (who?) became the Dem’s candidate with the party totally split between “wets and drys” (drinkers and prohibitionists). One of the greatest American presidents of all time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, won in a brokered convention in 1932. And as recently as 1976 the Republicans did not have a clear winner going into their convention and it had to go to one ballot for Gerald Ford, the president that pardoned Nixon, to edge out Ronald Regan. So could it happen again this time?

Fox News TV commentator Joel Smith calls Palin “a dream candidate.”  But in another Fox News interview, Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter said of  her  “I  don’t know what people are cheering for,” and Washington Post reporter Rachel Weiner says Palin is too much of a polarizing figure. “Her clout is dubious. Her popularity peaked long ago, and the supporters she does have won't necessarily follow her lead.”  

But in a country where over half the population doesn’t have a passport, two-thirds are “born again” and close to half don’t believe their president is an American – anything goes. It’s also a deeply patriotic country and who better than a Tea Party darling to be the next president.

What about Oprah Winfrey? Someone should ask her. She’d  make a hell of a better president than Romney, Santorum, or God forbid, Newt Gingrich.