Steve Kornacki: About that Palin-Reagan Comparison...
[Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor.]
...McCain isn’t the only Republican peddling Palin-Reagan comparisons. It is, in fact, the example of Reagan that fuels the hopes of many of Palin’s staunchest supporters, who see encouraging parallels between her political standing heading into the 2012 election cycle and Reagan’s in the run-up to 1980. After all, because of his perceived extremism and divisiveness, Reagan was the Republican candidate the Carter White House most wanted to face in ’80, roughly the role Palin now plays. But Reagan made this conventional wisdom look foolish -- why can’t Palin do the same?
Superficially, the comparison is sound. Reagan, like Palin now, sucked up a disproportionate share of the media oxygen in the early stages of the ’80 GOP race. He set the terms of the debate within a party whose right-wing base was in revolt against its own establishment. When Senate GOP leader Howard Baker, a pillar of the party’s late-'70s establishment with presidential aspirations of his own, surprised Capitol Hill by opposing Jimmy Carter’s SALT II treaty in 1979, it was a dramatic illustration of the clout of the Reagan’s ideological soulmates -- the same way that Mitt Romney’s jarringly overheated opposition to Barack Obama’s START treaty is testament to the grip of Palin-style conservatism on today’s GOP....
But there are some significant reasons to doubt whether Palin is positioned to replicate the success Reagan enjoyed 30 years ago.
The most obvious is that Reagan had already run a full-fledged national campaign of his own, one that had cemented his status as the leader his party’s conservative wing -- a role he’d been building toward for more than a decade, since his celebrated (and nationally televised) address on behalf of Barry Goldwater in 1964....
Read entire article at Salon
...McCain isn’t the only Republican peddling Palin-Reagan comparisons. It is, in fact, the example of Reagan that fuels the hopes of many of Palin’s staunchest supporters, who see encouraging parallels between her political standing heading into the 2012 election cycle and Reagan’s in the run-up to 1980. After all, because of his perceived extremism and divisiveness, Reagan was the Republican candidate the Carter White House most wanted to face in ’80, roughly the role Palin now plays. But Reagan made this conventional wisdom look foolish -- why can’t Palin do the same?
Superficially, the comparison is sound. Reagan, like Palin now, sucked up a disproportionate share of the media oxygen in the early stages of the ’80 GOP race. He set the terms of the debate within a party whose right-wing base was in revolt against its own establishment. When Senate GOP leader Howard Baker, a pillar of the party’s late-'70s establishment with presidential aspirations of his own, surprised Capitol Hill by opposing Jimmy Carter’s SALT II treaty in 1979, it was a dramatic illustration of the clout of the Reagan’s ideological soulmates -- the same way that Mitt Romney’s jarringly overheated opposition to Barack Obama’s START treaty is testament to the grip of Palin-style conservatism on today’s GOP....
But there are some significant reasons to doubt whether Palin is positioned to replicate the success Reagan enjoyed 30 years ago.
The most obvious is that Reagan had already run a full-fledged national campaign of his own, one that had cemented his status as the leader his party’s conservative wing -- a role he’d been building toward for more than a decade, since his celebrated (and nationally televised) address on behalf of Barry Goldwater in 1964....