May 18, 2010 06:45 PM UTC

There is a tide...

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• by: SheepskinStrutt

…And I believe it’s turning. The recent skirmish ahead of GOP darling Sarah Palin’s visit to Denver and (purported) endorsement of Jane Norton has, as most of you know, made things a lot more interesting. This from the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_1…

The leading contenders for Colorado’s Republican U.S. Senate nomination traded shots Monday regarding the timing of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s upcoming visit.

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck said he thought it would be “rude” for Palin to steal the limelight from the state Republican assembly by endorsing former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton on Saturday night, as has been rumored she will do.

Palin’s appearance at Magness Arena in Denver will come hours after the state GOP assembly wraps up in Loveland – where Buck likely will overwhelmingly capture the party nomination and get his name on the August primary ballot.

Norton, Buck’s chief opponent, is skipping the convention in favor of petitioning onto the ballot. Palin hasn’t given any explicit Norton endorsement, but she has danced around the idea recently.

In a release Monday, Norton’s campaign said Buck was criticizing “one of the heroes of the conservative cause.”

Some thoughts on this: As much as the Norton campaign has suffered from its peccadilloes and in-party fighting (which Dems certainly aren’t immune to, are they, Senator Lincoln?), a Palin endorsement is an positive shift in the right direction. Let us take, for example, the GOP primary race in which polls are presently opening; Rand Paul’s trendline can be directly correlated to being endorsed by the Wasilla Wonder, and that race is most likely going to be Paul over Greyson as a result. Apologies to James Dobson, but no one can match Palin’s endorsement in the activist crowd of the GOP.

In the GOP primary to unseat Barbara Boxer, Palin’s endorsement of Carly Fiorina has put a damper on Chuck DeVore’s hopes at galvanizing Tea Party energies. Her nod in the race has had a direct impact on the rhetoric of the Tea Partiers, who seem prone to moving on to other “incumbent” targets after Palin delivers the fiat. Within the CA race lies, I believe, a fascinating parallel. If one of Norton’s problems has been solidifying the party around her as conservative enough for the activist Right, the impact of the undisputed Queen of the Tea Party’s nod cannot be overstated enough.  In essence, the DeMint endorsement that all of us saw as so deleterious to the Norton campaign would be matched, if not nullified, by a Palin endorsement.

For the Buck people, this one is going to be tough to stomach; Buck’s “rude” comment has already raised ire on the righty blogs, and he has no trump card if Palin decides to go through with the endorsement. He has seemed to relish the momentary (in my opinion) high ground, but no one can deny the indelible mark this will place on his campaign, especially if his tone starts moving from the mellifluous to the mercurial. Given the precedent shown by other GOP primaries, Palin’s picks seemed poised for success, and for a campaign that many of us here at Pols saw as floundering at best, this is the beginning of a counteroffensive.