Influence of Palin and Tea Party Wanes in Early Contests
In October, Sarah Palin announced that she would not run for president in 2012, ending the media frenzy around her potential candidacy even as she vowed to remain politically active and influential.
I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, she wrote in an e-mail to her supporters.
Just over three months later, her attempts to wield influence in the presidential campaign the way she did during the 2010 midterm elections have largely fizzled.
And the Tea Party movement that she helped to turn into a powerful political force in 2010 has so far displayed little impact on the course of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign.
Over the last two weeks, Ms. Palin has urged voters in South Carolina and Florida to vote for Newt Gingrich as a way of striking back against the Republican establishment in Washington and against liberals.
If for no other reason, rage against the machine, vote for Newt. Annoy a liberal. Vote Newt. Keep this vetting process going, keep the debate going, Ms. Palin said on Fox News two days before Tuesdays primary in Florida.
Ms. Palin, who pointedly said she was not endorsing anyone in the Republican contest, draped her remarks in the anti-establishment rhetoric of the Tea Party, saying that Washington Republicans who oppose Mr.! Gingric h were fighting against the cause of freedom.
They want to crucify him because he has tapped into that average everyday American Tea Party grassroots movement that has said enough is enough of the establishment, Ms. Palin said. We need somebody who is engaged in sudden and relentless reform and isnt afraid to shake it up. Shake up that establishment.
But in the contest between the Tea Partys Sarah Palin and that establishment on Tuesday, the establishment won decisively.
Not only did Mr. Gingrich lose badly to Mitt Romney after Ms. Palins public pronouncement, but he even lost over all among supporters of the Tea Party, a plurality of whom apparently rejected Ms. Palins call to arms for the supporters of that movement.
About 65 percent of the voters in Floridas Republican primary said they supported the Tea Party. But among those voters, 41 percent told pollsters that they cast ballots for Mr. Romney, while 37 percent said they cast ballots for Mr. Gingrich. (Though, those who said they strongly support the Tea Party favored Mr. Gingrich 45 percent to 33 percent.)
The results could reflect in part the lack of wall-to-wall coverage of Ms. Palin these days. She continues to have a perch at Fox News and millions of followers on her Facebook page, but as the 2012 campaign has heated up, she no longer commands the kind of attention that she once did.
But it may also signal that the Tea Party movement is no longer able to exert the kind of sway that it did during the primary campaigns two years ago.
In the Congressional midterm elections, Tea Party groups in more than a half-dozen states helped upset the candidates endorsed by the Republican establishment. Some of their most high-profile Senate candidates were defeated, but dozens of Tea Party members now roam the halls of the Congress.
But the presidential campaign! has bee n different.
Representative Michele M. Bachmann of Minnesota, who calls herself a founding member of the Tea Party caucus in Congress, bowed out of the presidential race after a disappointing finish in Iowa. Her Tea Party affiliation did little to help her campaign.
Herman Cain, who also claimed the mantle of the Tea Party, and Rick Perry, whose conservative views were in line with many members of the movement, both dropped out of the primary race.
That has left Mr. Gingrich as a possible candidate to be embraced by the Tea Party as conservatives seek to find an alternative to Mr. Romney. Ms. Palin pushed that idea for the first time in the days leading up to the primary in South Carolina.
If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, Id vote for Newt and I would want this to continue, Ms. Palin said. A spokesman for Mr. Gingrich chose to embrace Ms. Palins comments as a full-throated endorsement.
We think its a pretty darn clear call to arms, R.C. Hammond, a spokesman for Mr. Gingrich, told NBC News before the South Carolina vote.
Tea Party supporters in South Carolina did vote for Mr. Gingrich, according to exit polls that night. Of the 64 percent who said they supported the Tea Party, 45 percent went for Mr. Gingrich; Mr. Romney received just a quarter of Tea Party supporters.
But a week later in Florida, the Tea Party did not buoy Mr. Gingrich.
The question for the Tea Party and Ms. Palin going forward is whether Mr. Gingrich fully embraces the movement, and whether he continues to remain a viable alternative to ! Mr. Romn ey for the next several months.
If Mr. Romney manages to quickly dispatch the challenge by Mr. Gingrich, it will further call into question the power of a movement to produce electoral change on the scale that many thought possible less than two years ago.
On the other hand, if Mr. Gingrich maintains an effective candidacy through the coming months, he could help to re-energize the Tea Party movement around the fear of the establishment from both parties.
In his speech Tuesday night after losing in Florida, Mr. Gingrich vowed to run not a Republican campaign, not an establishment campaign, not a Wall Street-funded campaign but instead to wage a peoples campaign.
That sounds remarkably similar to the rhetoric that Ms. Palin used during a speech to Iowa Tea Party activists last September.
We must remember that the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012, Ms. Palin said at the time. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. Its not enough to just change up the uniform. If we dont change the team and the game plan, we wont save our country.
At the time, many people speculated that the Iowa speech was an indication that Ms. Palin would jump into the presidential campaign. She decided not to run, but she is still trying to stay relevant.
On her Facebook page last week, Ms. Palin expressed her frustration with a Republican establishment that is racing to the aid of Mr. Romney.
I question whether the G.O.P. establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama, she wrote. Oddly, theyre now using every available microscope and endoscope along with rewriting history in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own partys primary. So, one must ask! , who ar e they really running against?
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