Below The Beltway

One year later, the tensions between Sarah Palin and the McCain camp are still there:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The man who ran John McCain’s presidential campaign warned Friday that Sarah Palin could lead to a ‘catastrophic’ election result for the GOP in 2012 if the former Alaska governor captures the party’s presidential nomination.

“I think that she has talents,” Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager of McCain’s failed presidential bid, told CNN’s John King. “But my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, and in fact, were she the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result.”

The comments came during The Atlantic Magazine’s First Draft of History Conferece, held at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

“I don’t think it’s inconceivable that she could be the Republican nominee for President of the United States,” added Schmidt — who, among others in the McCain campaign, butted heads behind the scenes with Palin in the weeks leading up to Election Day. “I do think it’s fairly inconceivable that she could be elected President of the United States.”

Here’s the video:

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit while noting, correctly I think, that Obama’s electoral chances in 2012 will largely be influenced by the state of the economy three years hence, does note that, at the very least, Palin would be entering a General Election campaign with major disadvantages:

She does have trouble with independents, although she may be in the process of addressing that by refashioning herself as a strong-form libertarian. She has huge problems with women. And given the image that’s taken hold of her, in Krauthammer’s words, as someone unduly dependent on “platitudes and cliches,” nominating her would turn an election that’s supposed to be a referendum on Obama’s first term into a referendum on whether Sarah Palin knows what she’s talking about. Every misstep and error when discussing policy on the trail will be magnified through the lens of the Tina Fey “I can see Russia from my house” nonsense; the Democrats and the media will frame her as a female Dan Quayle and contrast Obama’s four years of presidential experience with centrists’ doubts about her qualifications. It’s not that she’ll have to be able to talk policy as fluently as any other candidate, she’ll have to be able to talk about it more fluently to scrub the media image of her as an ignoramus. It’s not impossible but … it’s tough.

And it will be made more tough by the fact that she would have to do all of that while running against an incumbent President who, barring a serious disaster, is likely to still be hovering in the 50-55% approval rating range when election time comes around. In 1980, it took a Ronald Reagan to unseat a sitting President, and even that wasn’t a sure thing until right before Election Day. Whatever she might be, Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan.