THE ANTI-PALIN?

Raphael made a good point in the comments to an earlier post: it's quite imaginable that one of the GOP candidates for president in 2012 will be Saint Petraeus.

It occurs to me that he may be the one person who could actually take hardcore-base GOP votes away from Palin -- not Christianist-but-insufficiently-angry Mike Huckabee, not Mormon Mitt, not pro-choice cross-dresser Rudy, not the guy who's now the other non-white-male base-friendly governor, Bobby Jindal.

If Petraeus is in the race -- assuming he doesn't do something unacceptable to the base in the next four years (stay on under a President Obama and actually work well with him, express a socially moderate position on any issue) -- the Palin crowd might actually feel it's treasonous not to vote for him, even if it means that they must, regretfully, give Palin a miss. That's why it seems likely that some members of the stop-Palin crowd are going to try to get him into the race, assuming he's not already making plans himself.

Oh, and elsewhere in comments, Greg is right -- don't overlook the ambitions of Jeb. He may seem old and past his sell-by date in 2012, but he does know how to maintain fairly broad appeal while frequently dabbling in envelope-pushing zealotry, particularly on church-state separation. Maybe he'll try to sell himself as a Palin who can win.