Either this poll or the most recent Rasmussen poll is an outlier. On May 20, Rasmussen had Paul with 59% of the vote and Jack Conway, his Democratic challenger, with 34%. Research 2000 has the race at 44% for Paul, 40% for Conway. Somebody is really wrong here. I checked the Research 2000 Web site for additional information. I didn’t find anything about the Paul-Conway race, but I did come across an article by the poll’s guru, Del Ali, saying that Sarah Palin would be the Republican nominee in 2012. This article was dated December 09, but don’t let that get in the way of Ali’s explanation. He writes: In June 2007 I unequivocally stated that Hillary Clinton would not win the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. I based this on two facts of which the latter are still belittled today by many pundits and political observers. The former was based on our state by state polling among both Democratic primary and general election voters which showed Hillary Clinton with “unelectable” high unfavorable’s which on average was higher than her favorable rating and ranged consistently in the high 40’s and low 50’s. The latter is simply the changing demographics among voters in the United States. This point of course was lost by many of those same pundits and political observers with my second prediction, that John McCain’s selection of Sara Palin as his VP was perhaps one of the worst selections ever made by a major political party’s presidential nominee. Today, Sarah Palin has unfavorable ratings higher than Hillary Clinton’s after her arrival on the national scene over a year ago. Of course I was ridiculed by those who seem to believe that the nation demographics and attitudes are still cemented in 1980, even after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. The recent murders of four police officers in Washington State by a career violent criminal who was granted parole by Mike Huckabee, when Governor of Arkansas, for all intents and purposes ended any realistic shot he had at winning the GOP nomination in 2012, given the fact that the majority of t.he Republican Party electorate is far more conservative culturally than it was in 1980. This leads me to my third prediction, Sarah Palin “WILL” be the GOP’s nominee in 2012 (emphasis added). Her base of supporters are so solid that I believe she is immune to what former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards said about the only way he could lose to David Duke is if he was found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. Palin will be the 2012 nominee based on how the 2008 GOP primaries played out and the party history when it comes to selecting their nominee. In 2008, there were three major players running for the GOP nomination. John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Rudy Giuliani was never viable at any time due to his position on abortion. So, among the big three, McCain would win as I predicted back in 2007 for the simple reason that Romney and Huckabee took votes from the same pool of culturally conservative voters, which although [it] makes up the majority of the party, it allowed McCain to walk to the nomination because he was able to win with a plurality in almost all the primary states among fiscally conservative and socially more moderate Republicans. As a result, the 2012 GOP nomination is Sarah Palin’s to lose for two reasons. First, with Huckabee done and the fact that cultural conservatives never really have warmed up to Romney, over 90% of these voters will support Palin and two, the front runner in the GOP historically always wins the nomination. I am sure the counter argument will be that Barack Obama was unknown as was Jimmy Carter in 1976. However, we are talking about the Republican Party which is never unpredictable in choosing their nominee. Reagan in 1980, Bush in 1988, Dole in 1996, GW Bush in 2000 and McCain 2008 were all considered the front runners almost three years out before their respective elections. The party is the most conservative it has been in its history and this makes it even less likely that the status quo would change when it comes to electing their nominee. There are never dark horse candidates in the GOP who win the nomination so forget Tim Pawlenty, General David Petraeus, John Thune, etc. Speaking of Generals, Dwight Eisenhower was the front runner for both the Democratic and Republican parties in 1952, the GOP was just a little quicker out of the gate. The irony is that Ike not only would have no shot of the GOP nomination today, he would be deemed a too liberal and UnAmerican by the vast majority of the GOP base today. This same majority which matters when deciding on the nominee of the GOP is etched firmly in stone in stone for Sarah Palin.