Matt Yglesias notes

I find [arguments that Sarah Palin is unelectable] to be not all that convincing. John McCain was a widely admired war hero with a reputation for moderation who had favorable ratings well over 50 percent on Election Day and he lost to a first-term senator with a black nationalist spiritual mentor. Palin isn’t the most formidable candidate out there, and in a very close election her flaws could easily deny the GOP the White House. And very close elections do happen—think how important the 2000 presidential election was in retrospect. But most elections aren’t that close, and if the fundamentals are strongly against Obama—which they may be—Palin will beat him.

I think the dirty secret of conservative Palin skeptics is that they think Sarah Palin would be a bad president.

By my reading what has happened is that the conservative movement has outsourced its elitism to the media. Rather than simply say “This woman is unqualified and we will not support her” they say she’s unelectable and that the media will trounce her.

You may have certain moral objections to this but given the constraints on the GOP, its not all bad. Many European countries outsource their elitist policies to the European Union. This is the only way they can hold their electorate together and beat back what they see as bad policy. Similarly this may be the only way GOP elites see that they can beat back bad candidates.

The alternative, one should note, is not a GOP that openly accepts the elitist argument but one in which all the elites are purged. If you believe – as it seems Matt does – that eventually the opposition party will win an election no matter who it is composed of then you want the opposition to be as high quality as possible. This means keeping the elites inside the tent.

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