Hey, Sarah, How’s That Dopey-Ragey Thing Workin’ out for Ya?

So far, 2011 — all 23 days of it — has been a bad year for Sarah Palin’s presidential campaign.

First, her response to the mass murder attack on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Jan.8 gave voters invaluable insight into how, as president, she would perform under pressure. Pres. Palin, they learned, would make the crisis — say an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel — about herself and then give a speech from the Oval Office in which she used her limited oratorical skills to dress down her critics.

Last week, two polls found that Palin’s approval rating had dropped to 38 percent. Her disapproval rating in the Gallup poll was 53 percent and 56 percent in the CNN survey. In Sarah Palin’s own Alaska, her approval is 33 percent.

Now Palin has come in fourth in a presidential straw poll of Republican activists in New Hampshire — behind vice presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and just a notch above her even crazier doppelganger, Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Palin received just 7 percent of the vote — which is eerily the same as the 7 percent she received last February in the straw poll at CPAC, the wingnut confab sponsored by the hate group, American Family Association.

Until recently, pundits were blue-skying the 2012 Republican primaries as playing out like this. Palin wins the Iowa caucuses, comes in second in New Hampshire after Mitt Romney, the former governor of next-door Massachusetts, and then rolls into the South Carolina, a hotbed of rage-addicted tea baggers — in other words, her base — and where Mormons like Romney are considered satanic cultists. By taking two of the first three, she becomes an unstoppable force and sews up the nomination.

That scenario, which took a beating after Tucson, came apart yesterday in New Hampshire. Here’s how Fox News reported it online:

[Former] Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney emerged as the winner Saturday of a New Hampshire Republican straw poll that aimed to gauge what kind of support early contenders have among the party faithful.

Romney received 35 percent support from the state party-sanctioned straw poll that was organized by ABC News and WMUR-TV.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who like Romney previously ran for president, came in second place with 11 percent. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who visits the state this week, had 8 percent, with 2008 vice presidential nominee former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at 7 percent.

Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina each earned 5 percent.

In 2008, Romney came in second in New Hampshire’s GOP primary behind eventual nominee John McCain. Romney has been leading the early polls of possible GOP contenders in 2012.

But some very prominent potential candidates didn’t score so well with the New Hampshire Republicans. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich earned 3 percent of the vote as did Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and former Arkansas Gov. and 2008 candidate Mike Huckabee.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani got 2 percent and Donald Trump got 1 percent.

It’s going to be hard for Palinistas to claim the New Hampshire group was not sufficiently right wing. The same Republicans who voted in the presidential straw poll elected a tea partyist to head the state GOP during the 2012 presidential season:

A fight to lead the New Hampshire Republican Party through next year’s presidential race ended Saturday with an upset victory by a conservative candidate backed by members of the Tea Party and other grass-roots groups. The candidate, Jack Kimball, a relative newcomer to party politics who ran for governor last year as a fiscal and social conservative, beat Juliana Bergeron, who leads the Cheshire County Republicans and was supported by former Gov. John H. Sununu, the outgoing party chairman.

The race was watched as a sign of how much influence Tea Party groups will exert here in the lead-up to New Hampshire’s presidential primary, the first in the nation, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 14, 2012. Mr. Kimball wasted no time in saying, minutes after his election, that he wanted the state’s Republican primary voters to choose a “good, strong conservative” candidate.

What this shows for certain is that 13 months out from the New Hampshire primary, Sarah Palin is not the frontrunner there. It’s possible she could pull it together and become the frontrunner — if she were to, say, hire non-amateur advisers, knuckle down and educate herself about the ways of the world and/or undergo a brain transplant.

A normal candidate — one who wasn’t on the payroll of her party’s fake news channel — would be done by now. George Allen’s nascent presidential campaign was felled by one word, “macaca.” Howard Dean’s shot at the White House ended with a hot microphone and a cheer that sounded like a scream. Conversely, Fox execs, who have invested in her because they want to run the Palin White House just like they ran Bush’s, will apparently allow Palin’s campaign to continue indefinitely.

What’s at stake for Palin here is her burgeoning financial empire. If she loses her viability as a candidate, the establishment media will eventually stop hanging on her every Tweet and Faceburp. If that happens, she’ll be relegated to the right-wing echo chamber, becoming a dumber, less well-spoken but just as toxic version of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin.

As the 2012 race shapes up, unless Palin transforms herself — and barring entrance into the race by some as-yet-unknown smart, charismatic candidate — the Republican 2012 primaries are going to look a lot like the 2010 primaries: Months and months of needless drama after which the putative frontrunner in the beginning, Mitt Romney, is anointed as the nominee in the end.