New Polls: Texas is a Swing State in 2020

With luck historians will write that Donald Trump was one of the worse things to happen to an already moribund Republican Party, a party that placed all of its future on shrinking elements of the US population  - e.g., aging white voters - while going out of its way to alienate growing segments of the national population - e.g., younger voters and the growing numbers of mixed or non-white voters.  Between peddling openly racist dog whistle sound bites and the utter incompetence of the Trump/Pence response to the Covid-19 pandemic, polls increasingly suggest the even red states like Texas and Georgia may end up in Joe Biden's column.  Of course if these polls prove prophetic, the most delicious aspect of it all will be that Trump loses by a landslide and his fragile, self-centered ego is devastated.  May he forever be branded as an incredible loser and the worse president in America's history. A piece at CNN looks at some of the latest polling.  Here are excerpts:

New CBS News/YouGov polls show President Donald Trump is in trouble in three states he won in 2016. He's tied with former Vice President Joe Biden in Arizona (46% to 46%), a state he won by four points in 2016. Trump's down 48% to 42% in Florida, a state he took by a point in 2016.

But it's the third state, Texas, where the eye popping result comes from. It's Trump 46% to Biden's 45%, a result well within any margin of error.

It's pretty clear looking at the data that Texas is a swing state in the 2020 election. The 2020 campaign could be the first time Democrats captured the Lone Star State in a presidential election since 1976. The CBS News/YouGov poll is not an outlier over the last month. There have been eight polls released publicly since the beginning of June. The result is that Biden and Trump are basically tied, with Biden up by a mere 0.3 points in Texas.

Importantly, and unlike in other states, the polls in Texas have not overestimated Democrats over the last few cycles. If anything Democrats actually slightly outperformed their final polls in the 2016 presidential race and 2018 Senate races.

Things may change the closer we get to the election, but Texas really is competitive at this point.

Texas has gotten progressively more competitive during Trump's time as a candidate and officeholder. A big statewide victory has eluded Democrats, though many races have come within single digits for the first time in a generation. In fact, the state seemed, if anything, to move to the left in 2018, as Democrats were able to achieve wins in some key congressional races. A Biden win would be a manifestation of that trend on the statewide level.
 As I noted last year, the reason the Democrats are doing so well in Texas is a shift among college educated white voters. You see this best in the suburbs of Austin, Dallas and Houston, where O'Rourke did disproportionately better than the Democratic Senate did six years prior.

Indeed, Texas' white voter population is very well educated. One calculation by the New York Times' Nate Cohn reveals that a little more than 42% of the 2020 likely white voters in Texas have a college degree. That's 13th highest in the nation and the most of any state Trump carried in 2016.
 I would expect the trend in the college educated areas of Texas to carry over to 2020. Much of Biden's gains over Clinton nationally have occurred among whites with a college degree. In national June polls, Biden was up 22 points among this group compared to Clinton's 12 point lead with them in the final 2016 polls of registered voters.  One problem for Biden is he does seem to be struggling among Hispanic voters nationally, and there are a lot of Hispanic voters in Texas. Although Biden is winning them by around 30 points nationally, he's not putting up the same margins as Clinton did in 2016.

Further, I wouldn't expect Texas to be the tipping state in the electoral college (i.e. state containing the median electoral vote plus one). Biden is certainly in a stronger position in the core six battleground states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) where the averages have him up anywhere from three to 10 points.

Still, the state has 38 electoral votes and a load of down ballot races that could prove to be alluring for Biden.
 Up to six Republican held House seats could realistically fall to the Democrats in 2020. Many of them are in the aforementioned suburbs.
 Finally, Democrats have a real chance to flip the Texas state House. They need a pickup of less than 10 seats, and race raters give them a decent shot of doing so. If Democrats did flip the chamber, then they'd have a hand in redistricting for the first time since the beginning of the 2000s.
 That's big for state and national politics given that Texas has more House members than any state except California.
 The bottom line is Texas is fertile ground for Democrats in 2020. Biden has to decide whether he truly wants to compete. Either way, he has a real shot of winning, and a chance to rewrite the political map for this year and for the generation to come.

.

Models Shift to Predict Dramatically More U.S. Covid-19 Deaths

Virginia's governor Ralph Northam - the only US governor who is a physician - just extended Virginia's business shutdown for another week as reported by the Virginian Pilot. Whether the May 15, 2020, opening date gets further delayed will depend on whether Virginia sees 14 days of improvement.  Meanwhile, a number of GOP lead states are opening up businesses and playing a game of Russian roulette with their citizens' lives.  New reports on models predicting the Covid- 19 death rate suggest that  Northam may be taking the wiser choice given the new predictions that 134,000 Americans will die of Covid-19 between now and August (243,000 if one includes the upper end of the margin of error).  A Johns Hpkins report predicted 3,000 deaths per day by June (that would be a daily death rate not too much less than the 9-11 fatality number).   It goes without saying that Trump is cheering on governors reopening their states focusing as always only on himself and what a weak economy could mean for his re-election hopes. The Washington Post looks at the disturbing model predictions.  Here are excerpts:

A key model of the coronavirus pandemic favored by the White House nearly doubled its prediction Monday for how many people will die from the virus in the U.S. by August – primarily because states are reopening too soon.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine is now projecting 134,000 coronavirus-related fatalities, up from a previous prediction of 72,000. Factoring in the scientists’ margin of error, the new prediction ranges from 95,000 to 243,000.

Dr. Christopher Murray, the director of IHME, told reporters on a call Monday the primary reason for the increase is many states’ “premature relaxation of social distancing.”

For the first time, Murray explained, the model is factoring in data from four different cell phone providers showing a major uptick in Americans’ going out in public. This rise of mobility in the last week or 10 days is likely leading to an increase in transmission, he said.

Even with its latest forecast, the University of Washington model is still far more optimistic than a model developed by Johns Hopkins for CDC predicting as many as 3,000 deaths per day by June.

In a statement on Monday evening, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health called the leaked models “preliminary analyses,“ saying that they had been provided to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help in scenario planning, were not a final version and were not meant to be used or presented as forecasts.

Still, the statement added, “the information illustrates that there are some scenarios, including the premature relaxation of social distancing, that are likely to cause significant increases in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States.“

In a statement to reporters, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said that the internal report obtained by The New York Times was “not a White House document” and hadn’t been presented to the coronavirus task force.

The CDC document projects north of 175,000 new cases of Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, each day. That’s up from about 25,000 new cases per day last week and more than four times the peak of about 37,000 new cases per day.

The alarming modeling comes as some states are already beginning to put parts of the White House’s phased reopening plan into motion despite concerns that the administration’s guidelines for doing so have not yet been met. It also underscores fears that moving too fast to relax strict social-distancing restrictions could fuel a dangerous second wave of infections.

The CDC document found some reason for optimism, noting that nationwide, the trajectory of new illnesses in "multiple counties, including hard hit areas in Louisiana and in the New York City region" has continued to decrease, and that incidence rates have recently plateaued around Chicago.

Still, it found that there "remains a large number of counties whose burden [of illness] continues to grow or are in an elevated incidence plateau, including in the Great Lakes region, parts of the Southeast, Northeast, and around southern California." The document includes a color-coded map of the country with darker spots peppered throughout, and it states that the goal "is to have all communities be represented in the lighter colors, demonstrating little to no disease burden and no increase in trajectory."

Murray also noted that the updated University of Washington model also now takes into account the ramping up of testing in most states, as well as warming temperatures heading into late spring and early summer. But he cautioned that the impact of temperature on coronavirus transmission is not yet fully understood, and likely will not be for several more months.

For now, IHME is assuming that every degree Celsius the temperature goes up will lead to a 2 percent decline in transmission. “Are we sure about that? No,” he said.

Southern GOP Governors Create a Covid-19 Coalition and Experts Fear a '"Perfect storm"

Georgia Gov. Kemp gambles lives of constituents.

In a televised "town hall" meeting this evening Virginia Governor Ralph Northam responded to various questions and explained why he was in no rush to reopen Virginia's economy and intended to remain mindful of the recommendations of medical experts.  Northam's approach is at sharp odds with that  of a reported coalition of Southern governors who are seemingly more concerned with staying in the good graces of Der Trumpenführer and the white supremacist, Neo-Nazis and anti-vaccine extremist now protesting in various state capitals against social distancing and stay at home orders.  The recommendations of medical experts is being ignored and these GOP politicians are not only gambling with their political careers but also the lives of their states' residents if there is a second wave of Covid-19 - which could be even worse - for failure to continue policies that have been working.  A piece in Politico looks at the situation and what could prove to be a deadly gamble. Here are article highlights:

Republican governors across the Southeast are teaming up to reopen the region’s economy, even as they lack the testing to know how rapidly the coronavirus is spreading.

One health expert called the political decision a “perfect storm” for the virus to reassert itself.

The newly formed coalition includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, a part of the country that has underfunded health systems, as well as high rates of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses that amplify the deadliness of the coronavirus.

And unlike their peers in New York, New Jersey and other Northeastern states that have been working cooperatively since last week to restart their economies, the six in the South have lagged on testing and social distancing measures.

“If you put these states together, there is a perfect storm for a massive epidemic peak later on,” said Jill Roberts of the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health. “The Southeast region is not known for having the best health record. Diabetes and heart disease come to mind. I am very concerned about how our states will do it.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned the move Tuesday on "Fox & Friends," but there was no formal announcement or much communication from other states involved.

“We have had a meeting with all the Southeastern governors — Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee,” DeSantis said. “And we shared a lot of ideas. I think we will be the same page on some stuff.”

As of Tuesday morning, the six states had collectively tested about one-tenth of 1 percent of their total populations. Mississippi, which ranks 15th nationally in testing, had the group’s best testing rate at 1.7 percent of its population. Georgia was the lowest, with a testing rate of less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent, or 42nd in the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Southern governors, most of whom have built political careers on small-government conservatism, are driving, by contrast, to restart their economies and get people back to work, even as infections mount.

Southern governors, including DeSantis, point to their slowing rate of increases of positive tests and falling numbers of hospitalizations.

Dr. Aileen Marty, a pandemic and infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said gains made through social distancing and other precautions are good signs, but not the signal to loosen efforts that Southern governors think they are.

“They are heavily Republican with social conservatives who are all of a like mind,” Marty said. “They are tempting fate by having the virus out and about among us, but if they don’t do it in a controlled way, we will again be back in situations of overwhelmed hospitals and more people dying.”

Georgia drew national attention — and some ridicule — after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said Monday that he would allow bowling alleys, gyms, nail salons and massage therapists to reopen on Friday, and let theaters show movies starting Monday, even as he admits the number of cases is likely to grow.

Roberts, with the University of South Florida, called the move fraught with peril. “I kind of enjoyed Gov. Kemp’s talk about reopening these places with ‘screening.’ He did not say testing. That capacity does not exist,” Roberts said. “My guess is he meant taking temperatures, which as we know is pointless,” because asymptomatic people can carry and spread the coronavirus.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb was equally blunt.
“Gyms, nail salons, bowling alleys, hair salons, tattoo parlors,” he said Tuesday on CNBC. “It feels like they collected a list of the businesses you know that were most risky and decided to open those first.”

The Tea Party Governor Backlash of 2014

While Republican continue to believe that 2014 will be a banner year for them - in the House because of horrifically gerrymandered districts that ensure GOP control - and the less than fortunate mix of Senate seats for Democrats up for re-election.  But, all may not be going as glowingly well as Fox News and right wing pundits like to imagine.  As in all elections, turnout will be critical and it remains possible that GOP excesses will galvanize the Democratic base to vote in stronger numbers than some expect.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at some potentially embattled Republicans who may be held accountable for Tea Party obstructionism and efforts to destroy the social safety net while disenfranchising minorities.  Here are excerpts:

[D]on’t believe the hype about 2014 being a Republican wave election. Something more complex is going on. Democrats are doing much better than they have a right to expect in the South, especially with family brand names like Landrieu and Pryor. Mitch McConnell even has an improbably tight race on his hands in Kentucky against Alison Lundergan Grimes.

More to the point, Democrat Kay Hagan looks strong in North Carolina, where the Tea Party wave of 2010 brought otherwise unified Republican control to this increasingly purple swing state. The state legislative excesses have been bad enough that GOP Governor Pat McCrory, the former mayor of Charlotte, found himself described as a “moderate among Wingnuts” by The Economist, which detailed his travails this way: “Unlike the pragmatic conservatives who have long dominated state politics, the Republicans now in charge are culture warriors…The governor found himself passing laws to ban sharia (Islamic law), restrict abortion and introduce strict voter-identification rules, which are being challenged by the federal government.”

Here’s where a slumbering national theme for 2014 starts to come into sharper relief. This year represents the first time local voters have been able to weigh in on the statewide elected officials who rode the Tea Party wave to victory in 2010. So while the Senate sucks up all the oxygen, the governors’ races might really reflect the mood of the electorate more accurately.

Seen through this lens, a pattern starts to emerge. Wisconsin’s Scott Waker is frequently talked up by RNC types as a leading 2016 contender, but he’s fighting for his political life at home, beset by a tsunami of scandals and running neck and neck with Mary Burke. Walker’s most-favored Midwestern governor status in D.C. is in trouble despite a misguided arrogance born of his surviving a recall attempt. His efforts to rein in the public sector unions have been successful, but his style and tone—and did I mention scandals—could make him an unexpected loser on Election Night.

In Kansas, Sam Brownback should be cruising to an easy reelection in one of the reddest states in the nation. But the theocon is trailing Democrat Paul Davis because of Brownback’s RINO-hunting purges, social conservative crusades, and what is becoming something of a Waterloo for the idea that all tax cuts pay for themselves.

Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott was a Tea Party-wave fluke to begin with. An unlikely messenger for less-government libertarianism, Scott made his fortune by founding the hospital conglomerate Columbia/HCA, which is now best known for the running up the largest Medicaid fraud in the nation’s history . . . . Scott has struggled to connect with voters in the Sunshine State despite pumping his own dollars into the effort. He’s facing former governor Charlie Crist, a slippery former Republican now apparently liberated by running as a Democrat and quick to call out GOP orthodoxy on climate change and other issues that matter in a diverse state flanked by the sea on three sides.

Pennsylvania is purple personified, and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is collapsing in the Keystone State. . . . . Stick a fork in Corbett, he’s done.

Maine’s odd governor, Paul LePage, was also an accident of the Tea Party wave . . . . has met repeatedly with members of a sovereign citizens militia group the FBI considers a domestic terrorist organization. He ain’t exactly a Maine-style centrist Republican. And the only reason he has anything resembling a prayer in hell of winning reelection is that Cutler and Democrat Mike Michaud are splitting a clear majority of voters who are anti-LePage and want to kick his butt out of office.

Rounding out the geographically diverse list is former congressman and current Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who sidestepped a congressional ethics inquiry by bailing out of the capital dome and still faces a far-closer-than-should-be-expected race from Jimmy Carter’s grandson, Jason.

So while the biggest story of the 2014 primaries was, by and large, the center-right Senate establishment beating back Tea Party radicals who would have gone down to defeat, à la Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, on the statewide level there are comeuppances coming that undercut overheated pundit claims that 2014 will be a Republican wave election.

Beneath the tough Senate hand dealt to Democrats, there is a lot of swing voter discontent with Tea Party governors who failed to steer toward the center once in office. This dynamic will have an impact on other races and should serve as a reminder to both parties that extremism is a vice in American politics.

Here in Virginia, the defeat of Ken Cuccinelli and his fellow extremists in a complete Democrat sweep supports the author's premise. 

Shockingly Sleazy GOP Governors

With the Bob and Maureen McDonnell criminal corruption trial underway, Virginia is learning first hand about sleazy governors - and a greed driven first lady.  But Virginia does not have a monopoly on sleazy Republicans.  Rick Scott, Chris Christie, Scott Walker are certainly in the running to give the McDonnell's a run for their money in the race for the title as "sleaziest governor."  But they aren't the only GOP sleaze bags out there.  A lengthy piece in Salon looks at the dubious group that some inside the Beltway depict as contenders in 2016.  The piece deserves a full read to fully understand the nastiness of these GOP governors.  One can only fear for the country if this is the best the country can offer.  Here are a few highlights:

There is nothing in U.S. politics more powerful than Beltway conventional wisdom. No mountain of facts can put the slightest dent in it. It’s the ocean in which all of Washington swims. Which is why Chris Christie still thinks he can be president—just resurrect his “tough-talking” “truth-telling” persona, and violà! It doesn’t matter how many lies he’s told, so long as the media buys—and sells—his “truth-telling” spin, reframing the facts as just what “critics say.” And if not Chris Christie, then some other GOP governor, because it’s 1999 all over again, and national disgust with Beltway Republicans can only mean one thing: Americans must be clamoring for a GOP governor to be “a uniter, not a divider.”

There’s just one problem with this narrative: The entire current crop of GOP governors is a passel of knaves, scoundrels, extremists and panderers, whose monumental collective failures aren’t even a blip on the D.C. media’s radar screen—though they should be. Because out in the states, their failures are killing people—literally by the thousands when it comes to denying Medicaid expansion (over 13,000 in eight Southern states this year)—and may even contribute to killing the GOP’s chances of a strong showing in Congressional elections come November. Take Georgia, for example. It’s still a safe red state that Romney won by almost 8 percent in 2012, but Democrat Michelle Nunn has a decent shot at winning the Senate seat her father held for decades this November—and that would greatly complicate GOP hopes of retaking the Senate. A fair number of Beltway folks are starting to notice this, but less noticed are the possible spillover effects between Georgia’s Senate and gubernatorial races, as scandal-plagued Nathan Deal is struggling to stay afloat against Democratic challenger Jason Carter, President Carter’s grandson.

What’s Nathan Deal done, exactly? Enough to warrant the No. 1 spot in “The Worst Governors in America,” a 2013 report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The report explains the list as follows:

His inclusion stems from: (1) using his gubernatorial campaign to benefit his daughter-in-law [she was paid $40,725.03, despite having have no previous campaign experience]; (2) using his office to benefit a business partner; (3) using his office to benefit a top donor; (4) arranging a taxpayer-funded job for a political foe; and (5) obstructing ethics investigations into his business dealings.

Indeed, CREW’s report includes 18 governors, of whom 16 are Republicans, 11 of them elected in 2010, one in 2009 and one in 2012, for a total of 13 from the Tea Party wave era. They are, if anything dramatically more corrupt as a group than the governors elected before them.

[I]t would not be surprising if Deal ended up like the #3 governor on CREW’s list, Robert McDonnell, once touted as a top prospect for being Mitt Romney’s running mate, now former governor of Virginia, standing trial on 14 counts of felony corruption, obstruction and making false statements in federal court. CREW’s list was divided into three tiers—six “ringmasters,” six “clowns” and six “sideshows.” Joining Deal and McDonnell in the top tier are two men who’ve been touted as possible presidential candidates—Texas Governor Rick Perry (despite his laughingstock performance in 2012: “Oh look! His new glasses make him look so policy-wonk serious! Like Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor”!”) and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (If Christie stays dead, Walker wins re-election and nobody else with a pulse shows up)—as well as Maine Governor Paul LePage and Florida Governor Rick Scott.

GOP policy collapsed in ruin under George W. Bush, and the only way to defend it now is blame-shifting, denial and outright hallucination. Jindal—elected in 2007—is a perfect bridge figure, making the underlying continuity perfectly clear. “He also has refused the expansion of Medicaid, that’s something you obviously have in common with many conservative governors around the country, and the result of course is that more than 250,000 low-income adults don’t have access to health coverage,” Moller added—yet another aspect of how post-Bush ideology has crystallized around being anti-other, with “other” being a catch-all category in which “atheist,” “Muslim,” “fascist,” “socialist,” “RINO,” “Beyoncé voter” and more all merge together in one big towering cloud of Sharknado menace.

There are many more GOP governors I could write about. There’s Florida Governor Rick Scott, who I’ve alluded to in passing. There’s North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who worked for Duke Energy for 29 years, received massive financial support from Duke’s PAC and executives, and appointed regulators who reached a sweetheart settlement protecting Duke from citizen lawsuits over coal ash groundwater contamination, which was only withdrawn after a staggering February 2014 spill. There’s the pugnacious Paul LePage of Maine, and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, a pale shadow of prominent endorser Sarah Palin, who’s never lived up to her national-level hype. LePage is #2 on CREW’s list, Haley, #10. But reading CREW’s summaries of each, one gets the distinct impression that the differences are more a matter of temperament and degree than of substance or kind.

The Closed Mindedness of Chris Christie

As Think Progress is reporting, Washington State Governor Christine Gregorie wrote a letter to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (the letter is pictured below) sharing her views on how she evolved on the issue of same sex marriage offering to discuss the issue. Christie, apparently afraid to buck the marching orders he has received from the Christianist elements if the GOP, has to date not even acknowledged receipt of the letter. Think Progress has this highlights:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) hopes to put the politically delicate question of same-sex marriage behind him and is prepared to swiftly veto a bill extending marriage rights to gays and lesbians, even if it means ignoring the arguments of proponents.

Rather than considering equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, however, Christie has largely dismissed his critics and called for a state referendum on the issue. During a press conference yesterday, the New Jersey governor referred to the senate’s passage of same-sex marriage bill as “a good bunch of theater” and told lawmakers, “it’s not going to happen.”

Christie is a fool if he believe the issue of inequality can be so easily avoided. I hope it comes back to bite him in his fat ass.

The Bi-Polar Republican Party

The obstructionist Republican Party seems to be careening increasingly off into delusional la la land - except that is for GOP Governors who seem to be warming to Barack Obama and the stimulus package. But then again, they have states to govern and must put pragmatic approaches ahead of lunatic ideology like the GOP Congressional members and the anti-immigrant, anti-gay, Christo-fascist party base. Backing the stimulus are governors like Jim Douglas of Vermont; M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut; Charlie Crist of Florida; and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California (pictured above). Meanwhile 55% of the GOP base still believe that Sarah "Bible Spice" Palin represents the future of the party. Personally, I believe (and sincerely hope) that until the GOP throws the Christian Right off the bus, the party will continue to drift into the political waste land. Here are some highlights from the New York Times on the GOP governors who seem to be distancing themselves from the Kool-Aid drinkers:

*

President Obama must wish governors could vote in Congress: While just three of the 219 Republican lawmakers backed the $787 billion economic recovery plan that he is signing into law on Tuesday, that trifling total would have been several times greater if support among the 22 Republican state executives counted. The contrast reflects the two faces of the Republican Party these days. Leaderless after losing the White House, the party is mostly defined by its Congressional wing, which flaunted its anti-spending ideology in opposing the stimulus package.

*

In the states, meanwhile, many Republican governors are practicing a pragmatic — their Congressional counterparts would say less-principled — conservatism. Governors, unlike members of Congress, have to balance their budgets each year. And that requires compromise with state legislators, including Democrats, as well as more openness to the occasional state tax increase and to deficit-spending from Washington.

*

Mr. Crist even campaigned last week with Mr. Obama in Florida for the recovery package. “Whether it’s teachers or people on road crews helping our infrastructure, those in the health care arena as it might relate to Medicaid, all of these areas are important, all of them can produce jobs,” Mr. Crist said, adding, “Regardless of what your party is, Republican or Democrat, it really doesn’t matter. We have a duty and an obligation to the people who elected us, no matter what our position happens to be, to work together to get through this thing.”

*

Privately, Republicans favorably contrasted Mr. Obama with the outgoing Republican president, George W. Bush, according to two participants. Though Mr. Bush had been a governor — in good economic times — his relations with state executives were distant at best.

*

As for the Bible Spice lovers, the Washington Post had this to say about the GOP base:

*

The latter group [the national conservative base] are far more important to Palin's political future as they will likely play an outsized role in choosing the next presidential nominee of the party. Assuming the nominating calendar stays the same as it was in 2008 (a big assumption), two of the first three contests -- the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary -- will give a major edge to the most conservative candidate. And, late January polling by Rasmussen Reports shows a majority of Republican voters (55 percent) believe that Palin is the right model for the party going forward while just 24 percent said the same of 2008 nominee John McCain (Ariz.) . . . Palin polarizes. It remains to be seen whether that trait is the key to her future successes or the hurdle that holds her back.