Primaries a win for Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney
By ANDY BARR | 6/11/10 4:50 AM EDT Text Size-+reset.
Both former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Massachussets Gov. Mitt Romney backed the GOP's first-place finishers in the South Carolina and Iowa gubernatorial races. IfSarah Palin and Mitt Romney decide to run for the presidency in 2012, they'll have some powerful friends in the early states that are key to winning the GOP nomination.
Mike Huckabee? Not so much.
All of it is part of the presidential election fallout from Tuesday’s primaries in Iowa and South Carolina, two states so pivotal in the GOP nomination process that even their off-year state elections are carefully examined for their relevance to the next presidential race.
Both Palin and Romney backed the first-place finishers in the high-profile governors races in the two states —former GOP Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa and State Rep. Nikki Haley in South Carolina — endorsements that are likely to pay dividends in the event either makes a bid for the presidency in 2012.
Huckabee, on the other hand, bet on the wrong horses — he used his political action committee to invest heavily in the losing campaigns of businessman Bob Vander Plaats in Iowa and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in South Carolina, two candidates who finished some distance behind on Tuesday.
Branstad’s victory and Haley’s first-place finish — she’ll face Rep. Gresham Barrett in a June 22 runoff —represent a subtle but possibly important shift in the conservative grass roots, which powered Huckabee in 2008 to an improbable win in Iowa and a strong second place showing in South Carolina. Romney, meanwhile, finished a disappointing second in Iowa in 2008, despite spending considerable time and money to build a commanding organizational lead in the traditional kick-off state.
The most obvious signals Tuesday were that GOP voters who showed up in South Carolina are comfortable with a woman heading the statewide ticket — Haley would be the state’s first female governor, if elected — and that Iowa Republicans preferred a more moderate conservative over a harder right Christian conservative.
For Palin, who is already popular with conservative activists in Iowa and South Carolina, her support for the GOP nominees — who serve as the de facto party leaders in the two states — means she now has important allies in exactly the right places for 2012.
“I think those endorsements help Palin more than they actually help the candidates themselves,” said GOP strategist John Feehery. “She now has friends for life, and she has created the perception that she has her finger on the pulse of the Republican Party, which gives her more credibility as the party spokesperson.”
Perhaps of more consequence for a potential Palin presidential bid, the former Alaska governor now has access to a network of staffers and activists with recent experience in winning contested statewide races.
Read more: www.politico.com/news/sto.../38410.html#ixzz0qZG8bXoI
