WASHINGTON - Call it Sarah Palin schizophrenia.
To many people, voters and pundits alike, she's a disaster, one of the single worst vice-presidential picks in American history.
To core Republican supporters, there's an alternate Sarah Palin universe where she basks in superstar status and is a strong contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 should John McCain lose on Nov. 4.
"Palin draws large crowds and has energized Reagan Republicans, gun owners, women and people of faith," Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, said recently.
"She is an asset and the most consequential VP candidate in a generation."
Others scratch their heads at such assessments, noting even longtime Republicans have turned on Palin, who's currently embroiled in her latest controversies -- she's spent US$150,000 of Republican cash on designer clothing since McCain chose her as his running mate in late August, and she's charged the state of Alaska for her children's campaign travelling expenses.
Her addition to the Republican ticket helped convinced retired Gen. Colin Powell to swing his support behind Democrat Barack Obama. It was also the tipping point for Ken Adelman, a prominent Republican who once worked for Ronald Reagan. Adelman says he, too, will vote for the Illinois senator.
Independent voters have cited Palin as the reason they're opting for Obama on Nov. 4. And a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll conducted earlier this week suggested Palin's lack of qualifications to be president is voters' No. 1 concern regarding McCain.
"If the Republican party is to survive the next decade or so as a major competitor for control of national politics in the United States, it will have to be a vastly different Republican party in four years," says Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University and author of "Pursuing the American Dream: Opportunity and Exclusion Over Four Centuries."
"They will have to go into a major period of reassessment. Perhaps if Sarah Palin emerges as an extraordinarily different person than she is today -- in other words she has gone to school and has learned all about foreign and domestic policy and has recreated herself as a knowledgeable figure in the Republican party -- that it's a possibility she could mount a successful run."
Others say it doesn't matter that Palin has alienated voters, pundits and moderate Republicans. What's important, they say, is that she is beloved by core Republican supporters due to her right-wing views on a wide range of issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and immigration.
A Washington Post tracking poll released earlier this week indicated that Republicans and conservatives, for the most part, believe Palin's selection demonstrated the strength of McCain's ability to make sound decisions.
More than seven in 10 Republicans, and just under that number of self-identified "conservatives," said McCain's choice of Palin made them more confident in the kind of decisions he'd make as president.
"In most presidential primaries, the candidate most in line with the conservative or liberal base of their party winds up winning," wrote the Post's Chris Cillizza, noting that McCain was the rare exception to that rule.
"Palin is clearly of the conservative base in a real and meaningful way; they view her as their first real spokesperson on the national stage in recent memory -- perhaps since Ronald Reagan. It's hard to imagine those feelings going away because she has not worn well with either moderate and independent-minded voters (or) the conservative media."
But it's not enough to energize the base, Jillson said Thursday, since the base's core ideals are no longer resonating with Americans who are decisively growing more socially progressive. They're no longer excited by the Reagan-era ideals of social and fiscal conservatism and aggressive foreign policy decisions.
"As they consider Sarah Palin, the Republicans will need to ask themselves if the path to plausibility is to look back to the past at Ronald Reagan or to look forward to the 21st century and create a new party for this era," Jillson said.
"It's really a crossroads for the party, and if they misplay it they will wander in the wilderness for a decade or two."
