I’m of two minds about Sarah Palin.
The sensible rational part of me says “Oh please, please, Republicans, nominate her in 2012. That would mean Obama would win in a walkover, because she’s got so many things wrong with her as a candidate that the American electorate would run away from her as fast as it could.”
The paranoid part of me says “If the economy hasn’t fully recovered by then, the American electorate will be so unhappy it will vote for her as a reaction to those circumstances.”
Which side of my mind wins on any given day depends on how much idiocy I observe from my reading of the news. Low idiocy, rationality wins. High idiocy, paranoia wins.
It’s not clear she wants to be President, there are large elements within the party that second that sentiment, and so, no.
The hardest thing to remember about the whacko Conservative right wing is how small they really are. The public forums owned by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. are so noisy you forget the Pareto principle – 90% of the noise (approximately) is made by 10% of the people.
The reason the Republicans are losing so much ground so fast is that most of the American public is somewhere in the middle two standard deviations, while they’re at least 3 sigmas out on the curve…