I saw this last week; the Washington Post has put up a Palin Endorsements Tracker to track, well, former Governor Sarah Palin’s endorsements. So far, of the 42 that they list: 20 primary wins, 10 primary losses, 6 still to be determined (this includes Miller up in AK, as the primary isn’t officially concluded up there yet), and 6 no-primary. That works out to two-to-one successful primary picks, which is apparently not too shabby.

Looking at the map itself: it’s pretty eclectic.  Categorizing the choices is surprisingly hard, and may be actually the result of a deliberate strategy by Palin.  Maybe she’s running, maybe she’s not; maybe she’s Tea Party, maybe she’s establishment; maybe she’ll throw her support behind female candidates, maybe that’s not really a concern for her, balanced against the need for conservative candidates. If I were a Democratic strategist, this would be worrying me.  Hard to plan against a strategy where the pattern isn’t obvious*.

Moe Lane

*I know that Democrats like to pretend that Sarah Palin is a short- and long-term disaster to the Republican party, but in terms of 2010 that is absurd.  This election is going to be largely fought in districts and states that McCain/Palin won in 2008; and her national favorable ratings are going to be irrelevant in districts like KS-03 or AR-01.  I make no estimates or predictions about 2012, but it’s fairly clear that in 2010 Palin is going to be active in House general elections, and to the benefit of the Republican party.

No, seriously.  To be blunt about it: there are a lot of Democratic and progressive activists out there who seem convinced that their own psycho-sexual fetish about THAT WOMAN is shared by the general population… in much the same way that they assumed that every voter who didn’t like George W Bush actually hated the man, in the Nineteen Eighty-Four Two-Minute Hate sense. Which is… no, they didn’t, and don’t.  That’s because most people aren’t crazy.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.