Sarah Palin's Super PAC, adorably if predictably named Sarah PAC, has $1 million in cash after debts, according to an FEC filing released today. That's not a lot, especially compared to Mitt Romney's multimillion dollar hauls (it's a decent amount compared to Obama's stupid Super PAC, but that's a blog post for another time).
But Palin, perhaps because of her stewardship of a state so isolated from the rest of the nation, understands that a significant portion of policy battles are won or lost at congressional levels, not in the White House. Her money will likely be directed toward specially picked House and Senate races in 2012, where it could have an outsized influence.
Palin was responsible for a good deal of 2010's tea party wave, when 60% of her endorsed Senate candidates and 66% of her endorsed House endorsed candidates won seats, while 60% of her endorsed gubernatorial candidates took office. Discounting her endorsements of such shoo-ins as Marco Rubio and John McCain (heh), Palin also helped extreme ideologues like Rand Paul into the Senate, where he can now blah blah Fountainhead blah blah TSA all day long.
Even where her picks didn't win — and some, like Joe Miller, came scary-close — they caused headaches for establishment GOP candidates, which made Democrats happy but also had the effect of pushing those establishment candidates to the right, shifting the ideological moorings of the whole race. We can laugh all we want about Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, but they perverted the discourse of the election, and we all suffered for it: the candidates and storylines Palin pushed in 2010 reverberated all the way through to the debt ceiling debate.
Those were just endorsements. Now Palin's got money that she can put behind targeted candidates in vulnerable races. In many congressional races, candidates are separated by only a coupe hundred thousand dollars, which means an infusion of cash from Palin can swing the fundraising race to the conservative candidate, or help put the race out of reach of a Democratic challenger.
Of course, this is not 2010. 2012 won't be a great year for Democrats, but it won't be the bloodshed of two years ago. It's arguable whether candidates like Paul and the like can survive an election in an environment not completely disposed to their extreme worldview. But Palin showed that an ideological victory can be as meaningful as an electoral one. And Palin now has $1 million to back her ideology on whichever vulnerable races she sees fit.
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