Friday, February 24, 2012

The GOP is not Rocky and Palin is no Adrian

At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Palin commented on how the extended primary is going to strengthen the Republican party for the upcoming U.S. Presidential election.  It is not that Palin is outright in error for thinking this way, it is just that that is an overly optimistic perspective and against common sense.  The GOP is not Rocky and Palin is no Adrian.  This is not a Hollywood movie where the pain of training serves as intrinsic motivation for Rocky to overcome - well, most of his opponents.

The GOP primary candidates are not athletes and whatever mental training Palin sees as the intrinsic motivation, is more than likely only to create fatigue for the candidates.  The greater the fatigue, the greater the opportunity for GOP primary candidates to make mistakes.  Also, consider the use of resources because while President Obama is building his bank account, the GOP candidates are using theirs to fight against each other.  Even though, super PACs have large sums of money, the GOP primary is spending those bank accounts down like the individual campaigns.

Exhausting of monetary resources is one side of the story, the other side is the exhaustion of Republican voters, arguably the most important resource for the Republican party.  The velocity of the attacks ads in those States that have held a primary is fast and furious and citizens, Democratic and Republican, may have post traumatic stress disorder from the experience.  A negative experience is not the memory the GOP presidential candidate wants to flash before potential voters in the booth.  Voting is emotional while presidential campaigns tend to be executive mind fanfare ticking off the logical reasons why each presidential candidate should get the job.

So the reality that the GOP is not Rocky and Palin is no Adrian is likely the reason why President Obama will still have the word "President" before his name.  President Obama captured the Rocky emotion with his change campaign and though the change he got may not have been the change he intended, it is still tagged emotionally.  Only when change is forced on a voter by having no incumbent to vote for, will the GOP have a shot at the U.S. Presidency.