The interest in Sarah Palin continues to drive the traffic on this blog up and up and up, as the search hits keep rolling in; and it’s not just me, either—Adam Brickley’s blog, which is the hub of the Palin movement, topped 5,000 hits both Monday and Tuesday (a fact he relayed in his excellent “pep talk,” in which he made the case for Palin as well as he ever has). A great many people across this country—many Republicans, but also more than a few moderate Democrats—are catching the vision of a McCain/Palin ticket, and getting excited about the possibility. This is the reason John McCain needs to name Gov. Palin as his running mate, because you can’t say that about anybody else; the arguments for the other candidates are all purely rational, coldly political parsings of the data. There are equally strong rational arguments, and perhaps stronger, to be made for Gov. Palin, but among them is this: she excites people. None of the other candidates do that, except Mormons for Romney; none of them excite both wings of the Republican base; none of them excite people beyond the Republican base. Only Gov. Palin does that, and I hope Sen. McCain realizes that.The question is, will he do it? We’ll find out tomorrow—or maybe today, if it leaks the way the Biden pick did. If he does, then yes, the media will immediately go on the attack, but despite them, we’ll see the excitement continue to build; if he doesn’t, it will deflate. We have lifelong Democrats who are leaning toward voting Republican for the first time; some of them will go back to Sen. Obama. We have disaffected Republicans who don’t like Sen. McCain but are thrilled at the prospect of voting for Gov. Palin; some of them won’t vote. We have others who like Sen. McCain well enough but aren’t energized by him, but would love to turn out and work for a McCain/Palin ticket; they’ll still vote for him in November, but most of them won’t contribute otherwise. And then there are those of us who will keep beating the drum regardless, but would like to have as many reasons as possible to make our case; there’s simply more to be said for McCain/Palin than for McCain/Hutchison or McCain/Pawlenty, let alone McCain/Romney. And yes, for a lot of us, if the Palin energy goes, there will also be a lot fewer people listening to us as we do.So, will John McCain make history by picking Sarah Palin, Alaska’s preternaturally accomplished female governor, as his running mate? I don’t know—but I hope so.
