Ironically, the same week that Greensboro, N.C., celebrated the 50th anniversary of the student sit-ins that led to the abolition of Jim Crowism, race-baiting conservative Sarah Palin announced that she is considering a run for the presidency in 2012.
Speaking on “Fox News” on Sunday, she said she would become a Republican candidate, “If I believe that is the right thing to do for our country and the Palin family,” she said, “certainly I would.”
That statement basically means Palin will run for the presidency. The ditzy brunette with the inexplicable legion of loyalists and a baffling lack of foreign policy expertise is nevertheless a popular political personality who is primed to try to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Her innate ability to conjure up and harness venomous anti-Obama [some say anti-black] sentiments should concern African Americans, political pundits say.
There are several reasons a Palin candidacy is not out of the realm of possibilities, says Dr. William Boone, a Clark Atlanta University political professor. “She’s trying to position herself to run,” Boone says. “She’s rallying her base, that right wing base of the Republican Party — ultra conservatives, anti-abortion crowd, those who think the government is in their lives too much, people who make up libertarians who want a limited role for government.”
In addition to multiple political and economic setbacks, Boone assets that Obama is particularly vulnerable with one key demographic: women.
“There are women who don’t like Sarah Palin’s policies, nor do they believe that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. But in their minds, if you listen to them, she represents the independent woman who begins to assert herself,” he says, adding that “there are still women out there who believe that Obama stole the [Democratic] nomination from Hillary Clinton. That doesn’t mean they will support her [Palin] as president, but it certainly means that they admire her.”
“Although some folks do not take her seriously, there are folks who could use her within the Republican Party, who could use her to generate a certain kind of political movement for themselves. [They could] use that anger that she seems to represent in the country. So Democrats should be very concerned,” Boone says.
She also is a popular candidate because she is able to tap into a rage on the right with thinly veiled demagoguery and racist beliefs that blacks are indeed inferior and unqualified to run the nation. “Black people need to concerned,” Boone says. “That’s part of it, that’s what happened last time. I think they curry that type of stuff. They don’t really try to clamp down on that stuff,” Boone says. “They would not admit to that. There are certain people who support her who would not ever want to acknowledge a black person as the president. There’s not doubt about that. There’s no way around that.”
–terry shropshire
