How will the Republican candidates running for US President treat Sarah Palin during the primaries if she runs?

I don’t thing they will do much. The woman is bad enough she will treat herself, to the door early into this.

They’ll need to be careful NOT to laugh. If you remember back to the VP debate last time, one of the things Biden had to worry about was not looking like a bully (which I personally thing was BS because it meant she got a pass, but thats the way it is). In the end, I don’t think the party machine is going to let her run though (or if so, no seriously). If she does, its unlikely she’ll get any support from the party and therefore she has little to no chance of making it very far.

She won’t run. Fox News would have to stop giving her checks if she did.

They will treat her as a voice of reason reflective of what many Americans are feeling and wanting as far as “change” in our Government. As a viable candidate I believe even she is not that stubborn to think she has a hope in hell to even win the primary. She won’t run.

I think Palin running might present a bit of a tightrope for the other Republican candidates to walk. She does represent the Tea Party wing of the party to some extent and they are becoming a bit of a force to be reckoned with. I don’t think they are going to make or break the candidate, but they can certainly make a lot of noise and draw negative attention.

As an opponent.

They don’t need to do much. A good candidate would ignore her at his own rally. In a debate, she will dig her own hole because she makes no sense when speaking extemporaneously.

It’s pretty obvious she has missed having the spotlight off her. All the attention being paid to Trump for a month, now she craves attention. But she won’t seriously run, she’ll get some delegates and then make a big deal of pledging them to someone else and take credit for “crowning” the nominee. She couldn’t make it through a term as Governor, President would bewilder her. And she doesn’t have a Cheney to tell her what to do.

How embarrassing is this for the US? I mean,I know a lot of Republicans don’t give a flying fig about what the rest of the world thinks of our country, but people like her and Trump make us look like jokes; bad, scarily ignorant, not-right-in-our-heads jokes.

One show I was watching said if Palin doesn’t run Michele Bachmann will probably put her hat in. She’s worse in my opnion.

@aprilsimnel I agree with you. In 2008, Ms. Palin was chosen to be the star in England’s annual Bondfire Night. The reason she was picked? “Matt Southam, chairman of Battel Bonfire Boyes, said: “We just felt she was one of the most interesting characters in the American elections.” Gracious…how embarrassing is that?

@JLeslie There have been Republicans who have said she can’t be president, that she is not capable, but the majority seem to still smile and say things like, “the American people will decide.”

I essentially agree with both statements. She isn’t capable to be a US President; at least not by what I’ve read about her words and actions since the last election. I don’t follow her closely, but there doesn’t seem to be much, if any improvement in the past three years.

As for being elected by the American people: First, she needs to get the green light from Alaska’s registered Republican voters during their primary/caucus election in order to attend the Republican convention. The state Republican delegates are required to vote for their state’s candidate during the first round. I don’t know how many Alaskan Republican delegates there are, but I suspect that it is a much smaller number than most states.

There are a lot of hurdles in the election process that she will have to clear in order to run as a candidate for US President. And maybe it is just semantics, but anyone allowed to vote in the final election process, including state delegates, are allowed to cast their vote for whatever candidate they want, as far as I know.

As for how Republican candidates will treat Ms. Palin, I would hope that if they wanted a shot at winning their own state’s primary election, they would focus on their own state’s concerns and not what she speaking to in Alaska’s Republican primaries. If you meant the Republican convention, I hope that they would debate her viewpoints in a professional manner. If they want to have their name on the final voting ballot, that is the only logical way to do it.

@Pied_Pfeffer She doesn’t need to get any approval from the Alaskan Republican Party, she needs to do well in the early primaries and caucuses in order to be considered viable. And she could do well in Iowa because she has an organizer there. But after that she needs to do well in larger states with a broader and more diverse electorate.

@Pied_Pfeffer Am I missing something? As far as I know, every candidate runs in any primary they want to until they drop out. So she would run in Iowa, NH, etc… Usually by the time of the convention, there is no more debating to do. In fact, if there still is debating to do, the republicans are in HUGE trouble. The RNC (as well as the DNC) is a political move where everyone gets to make speeches. The whole purpose is to show how much support you have and how great you are. If they are actually still competing at this point, they lose this moment in the sun.

As a political matter, if she loses Alaska, she’s got some explaining to do. However, I believe its fairly late in the schedule so if she has already garnered a large number of votes by then, it may not be a problem. I doubt she’ll get this far at all, but thats the situation.

Oohps, forgot to add, I actually hope they don’t really treat her like a legitimate candidate. Yes, they should be polite, etc… but they should basically respond to everything she says with the minimum necessary to answer and move on. If the republican candidate wants to convince swing voters, they need to show they are still a party worth taking seriously. A lot of the reason McCain lost last time (aside from Obama’s brilliant strategy and rhetorical abilities) is that people couldn’t take him seriously after he selected Palin for VP. The other candidates need to show that they aren’t making the same mistake. Unfortunately, this is a fine line since part of the reason she was elected Governor of Alaska is that she was able to make her opponents look bad when they called her out on her BS. (Sorry, can’t find the video I wanted. It was a video of the debates during the Alaskan election).