GOP Leaders: We've Got to Stop Palin

After tomorrow, Republican establishment leaders will shift their focus to another hurdle: making sure Sarah Palin doesn’t get the 2012 presidential nomination. In interviews with advisers to other presidential contenders, Politico found wide-ranging agreement that the former Alaska governor must be stopped. “There is a determined, focused establishment effort to find a candidate we can coalesce around who can beat Sarah Palin,” said one.

The big problem: electability. “We believe she could get the nomination, but Barack Obama would crush her,” added the establishment figure, who, like others, refused to be named. Though the “sentiment was a nearly constant refrain,” Politico notes, there’s currently no organized effort against Palin. One strategy: Bolster the RNC, which could serve as a “counterweight to some kind of guerrilla effort Palin might try to launch,” says one GOP leader, continuing, "You deter someone by creating stronger opposition." Click here for more.
(More Politico stories.)