Former Bush communications adviser Nicolle Wallace took to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Wednesday, the home of recently announced Sarah Palin pessimist Joe Scarborough, and argued that the worry about the former Alaska governor's 2012 ambitions were unfounded. The GOP's supposed "President Palin" dilemma would work itself out, she said. Still, Wallace said that Palin displays "incredible cynicism" and is "very prickly."
"I believe that if she were on the cusp of becoming the nominee for the Republican party a whole lot of people... would talk about some of her more troubling deficiencies," Wallace said. "Her incredible cynicism, her bitterness, her aggressive attempts to claw anyone that points out an area for her to work on, I think these things will continue to reveal herself and the people that love her will continue to love her, but the people who are not so sure about her will, I think, formulate harder opinions and more clarity about her."
But when it comes to Republicans taking the initiative and aggressively mounting a campaign to eliminate Palin from the pre-2012 presidential proceedings, as Scarborough urged Tuesday, Wallace argued that this was unnecessary, and perhaps even impossible.
"No one's gonna cut her off at the legs," Wallace claimed. "Only Sarah Palin can beat Sarah Palin, and let me tell you why no one will take her on. Her defenders and supporters, the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity -- people I admire -- are so powerful on the Right that nobody wants to anger any of those people, nobody wants to end up in the crosshairs, and nobody wants to look like they are unwilling to let her do her thing."
Wallace continued: "Just let her do her thing, she is going to be exposed enough to the American public that she will reveal what her nature is. I think her nature has been revealed lately as very prickly, very cynical."
Some, such as Meghan McCain, have argued conversely that Palin's extreme media exposure is a positive thing for her seemingly impending campaign. McCain wrote in a recent post for the Daily Beast that Palin may even be capable of "saturat[ing] the American public until we forget that anything or anyone else exists or is even an option in 2012."
According to Wallace -- who worked on the McCain campaign in 2008 and stood directly at odds with Sarah Palin multiple times -- there's little real risk that anybody in the GOP would actually let this prospect come to light.
