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Republican pollster John McLaughlin commended Palin's ability to "give voice to people who think the government doesn't care about them and really see Washington as disconnected and adversarial to their lives." But he warned that the negative impressions generated during her time as John McCain's 2008 running mate could prove a steep hurdle to overcome as a presidential contender. "There are some inside the Republican Party who think she's too conservative and not up to the job," McLaughlin said. Greg Mueller, a GOP strategist with deep ties to the conservative movement, acknowledged Palin's strongest ties were to the Republican Party's more rightward edge. But he noted that she also appealed to nonaligned voters more concerned about taxes and spending than conservative social issues
-- the kind of voters who supported Ross Perot in the 1990s -- as well as women who thought she had been mistreated during the 2008 campaign. "Her appeal is antiestablishment, populist, and to center-right women finally seeing one of their own emerge only to be attacked and undermined," Mueller said. "It goes beyond presidential politics
-- it's cultural." Still, even some of Palin's stalwart supporters don't necessarily see her as a likely 2012 contender. "Do I think she's presidential material? Um ..." said Sandy Adrian, at the Fayetteville book signing, pivoting one hand in a gesture of ambivalence, even though three copies of Palin's book were stacked in her shopping cart. But, Adrian added, "you don't have to be president to change the world."
[Associated
Press;
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