Palin Top Pick Among National Security Republicans?

This one’s a puzzler.

The potential 2012 candidate who has the least foreign policy knowledge since George W. Bush is the #1 choice for GOPers when it comes to keep us safe?

Rasmussen serves up the head scratcher:

Palin is first with 29% support among voters for whom national security is most important. Romney runs a close second at 26%, with Huckabee at 19% and Gingrich at 16%.

Were these people not paying attention last Fall?

Also, some more numbers show Romney and Palin are neck and neck…

Among those Republicans who put economic issues first, Romney and Palin are tied with 24% support if the state primaries were held today. Huckabee is backed by 20%, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gets 15% of their vote.

But Romney at 34% is far and away the favorite among those who say fiscal issues are most important, followed by Palin (24%), Huckabee (17%) and Gingrich (14%).

I’m not quite sure what the difference is between economic and fiscal issues, so let’s just say that this is a wash and they’re tied for the time being.

But, as Republican strategist Mike Murphy says, “Run away!”

Other politicians are more reliable conservatives; Palin ran for governor on a set of populist issues usually linked to Alaska Democrats. She lacks any real accomplishment – no military or private-sector career of note, no academic achievement beyond a frenetic bounce between five colleges, including a sun ‘n’ surf-oriented outfit in Hawaii. She has served only two years as governor of a small and uniquely easy-to-govern state (other governors pine for Alaska’s small population and billions of dollars in easy revenue from oil production), a job she has now abandoned. [...]

So even now, after a bizarre resignation spectacle that should lead any levelheaded Republican to cringe at the idea of letting Palin within a thousand miles of the GOP nomination, she may have enough support to attempt a run for President.

She’ll lose, of course, almost certainly the Republican primaries and certainly the general election. Palin’s GOP is still only one part of that Republican base, and her slice will shrink after last week’s hara-kiri. Many of her one-time admirers will shake their heads and grumpily admit to themselves that those liberal jerks in the media elite might have been right about this one after all.

Here’s the question: Can Palin ride the disaster of 2008 to a 2012 nomination?

(Photo: AP via Daylife)