Which leads to the third and most peritent question: With all this coy dosey-doeing, who really knows what Sarah Palin thinks about anything, and why should anybody give a damn anymore?
Her much hyped speaking engagement in Indianola, Iowa on Saturday was not-so-implicitly billed, at least subliminally in the minds of her rabid supporters, as her long-awaited announcement of her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. But wily and long-time political observers, like John Fund, weren't buying it:
At the risk of being accused of misleading people, let me state that Sarah Palin isn’t running for president.
No, I don’t have “inside information,” other than that Sarah Palin has had the time of her life playing the media and political class like a fiddle by making them respond to her every Twitter twitch. She has gotten a platform for her views at places ranging from Iowa to the World Economic Forum in South Korea next month. The consternation she’s caused is sweet revenge or someone who will use her tea party speeches this weekend to express her disdain for how the media and the political class have let this country down.
But her ability to make reporters and pundits dance to her tune is ending. She clearly isn’t prepared to announce this weekend. When asked recently in Iowa if she would be ready to join the race by Labor Day, Palin said, "I doubt it."
In short, the biggest tease in American politics has lost her appeal. She's been dangling the tantalizing possibility of a peek beneath those barely-concealing fans for too long, and a lot of former admirers have moved on:
Her delay in deciding about running also has caused some of her supporters to drift away. She polls only 8% among Republicans in the latest Fox News poll. Surely, her support would climb if she actually entered the race but she faces another obstacle. Many Republicans just don't believe she is qualified to be president or think she is damaged goods in a general election. The Fox poll found a full 71% of Republicans and 66% of tea party supporters don’t want her to run.
For the record, Mrs. Palin lost me over two years ago when she ran away from the Alaska governorship. That sealed in my mind her Quayleization and elimination as viable presidential timbre. Oh, the philosophical and policy substance of her speeches is still as spot-on as it ever was, but she's no longer a capable electoral vehicle for the principles she espouses.
If she unambiguously embraced the role as unofficial roving Tea Party ambassador-without-portfolio that she declared to Greta Van Sustren last year and decisively disavowed any intention to seek the presidency (at least in this cycle), her credibility and reservoir of goodwill in conservative Republican circles would be indellibly enhanced. She would be acting in the best interests of her party, her movement, and the country she says she loves. She would know her role and so would everybody else.
But this isn't what she's doing. And the "Fizzle In The Drizzle" was gratuitous, aggravating proof:
This speech was said to be two things, and hinted to a third.
First, it was supposed to be a "major announcement." If there was a major announcement here, I missed it entirely.
Second, it was supposed to be a "full-throated defense of the Tea Party." It wasn't. It was platitudes and bromides sprinkled with flattering the crowd....
Third, what was implied was that Palin would make an announcement about her candidacy. She hinted about this "See you on September 3rd!," a campaign-like commercial promised.
And she never said publicly, "Although I am giving a policy speech, I will not be making any kind of declaration on September 3rd." Such a statement was leaked by "sources close to the governor," but is there something "unconservative" about simply making one's plans known?
So that other people don't waste their time?
Instead, after the encouragement of interest, and the cultivation of speculation about what that "major announcement" might be, it was a very standard-issue and not-particularly-important or novel stump speech.
Some might find this sort of coyness and games-playing "brilliant" or the like. I don't.
Put another way, if "this sort of coyness and games-playing" ever actually had a point to it, a self-evident purpose to which we were ever made privvy, perhaps some of us disaffected, exasperated, alienated ex-Palintista could understand what the grand master plan is, and maybe even get back on board with it and her. But this chain-yanking has been going on for over two years now with nary an end ever in sight, and a lot of us have long since tired of it.
If it ever was any kind of "brilliance," it's long since decomposed into the worst thing that could ever happen to an ambitious, aspiring conservative pol, something far worse than anything the Enemy Media could do to her since this is entirely self-created and self-inflicted: unseriousness. A serious conservative pol would make her intentions known one way or the other. If she's running, she'd declare her candidacy and run; if she's not running, she'd say so and get behind a like-minded candidate who is.
It's seemed clear for months, at least to me, that if Sarah Palin were running for president, she'd have declared months ago. That she hasn't tells me inequivocally that she knows she couldn't win the GOP nomination, much less unseat Red Barry, and would only screw up the chances of nominating a conservative standardbearer and electing him president.
Mr. Fund thinks - or thought as of last Friday - that he could read Mrs. Palin's moose droppings and discern who she's REALLY backing:
So if Sarah Palin isn’t running for president, what will she do in 2012? Even as a non-candidate, she has the potential to shake up the GOP race. In a recent slickly produced video producer by Team Palin that chronicles her bus tour of Iowa, Palin shakes hands with a girl in an “Americans for Rick Perry” T-shirt and then poses for a photo with the girl and her fellow Perry supporters.
“Given the elaborate editing that went into this production, is it likely that Palin would have approved a visual nod to Perry as a mere coincidence?” asks blogger Robert Stacy McCain, a keen-eyed Palin watcher. “I don’t think so.”
Indeed, Republican governors tell me that Palin and Perry clearly bonded when they attended meetings as fellow governors from 2007 to 2009. “As executives of the two biggest energy-producing states in the country they had a lot in common and were simpatico on issues,” one governor told me last week. “You could also say they are both larger-than-life personalities who no doubt learned from each other in the publicity department.”
Rick Perry already has vaulted — at least temporarily — to the front of the GOP presidential pack, leading Mitt Romney by 29%-22% in the latest Fox News poll that has Palin at 8%. If Sarah Palin decides that 2012 isn’t her year to run, as I firmly believe is the case, what sweeter revenge could she have on her media adversaries than to give early backing to a kindred conservative spirit who then went on to win the GOP nomination and indeed the presidency?
That’s why I believe Sarah Palin isn’t running, and why she ultimately will endorse Rick Perry.
Perhaps; perhaps not. It'd sure be nice if she'd just frakking come out and say so. But that wouldn't be NEARLY coy and too-clever-by-half enough for Fertilla the Huntress. So instead we got more gaseous crapola like this:
A crowd of 2,000 in Indianola, Iowa, braved torrential rain to hear former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blast “corporate crony capitalism” and the “permanent political class” in her speech to the Tea Party of America.
It was no mystery that the barbs were aimed at Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate who has spent most of his career in office and who is perennially dogged by charges of rewarding his financial supporters.
Perry is considered the latest frontrunner for the GOP nomination.
“You know that it’s not enough to just change up the uniform,” Palin shouted out. “If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country.”
Recently, Palin aides have been debunking rumors that she was ready to climb on Perry’s rumbling bandwagon and endorse him. In Indianola, she hammered home her camp’s message, telling the crowd that it was not good enough to replace Obama with any business-as-usual Republican administration.
“You must vet a candidate’s record,” Palin said. “You must know their ability to successfully reform and actually fix problems that they are going to claim that they inherited.”
So. John Fund and R.S. McCain rub their magic 8-balls and divine that Sarahcuda is a secret Perry-backer; Palin aides "debunk" that but their boss only breeds new rumors by making "veiled" swipes that "might" refer to Governor Perry.
Here's a question, gentlebeings: What is the likelyest outcome of this smarmy, innuendoizing pettifoggery? And here's the answer: If we're lucky, Sarah Palin's utter and complete political irrelevance. If we're not, the undermining of the one Republican presidential contender with the resume, ideological pedigree, and economic credibility to demolish the "god" and creed of Obamunism once and for all and rescue America from oblivion.
You know why Rick Perry is in this race and is running away with the GOP nomination? Because Sarah Palin wouldn't crap or get off the pot.
I no longer even care which she does. I just want her out of this race, Palmolive mouth and all.
[cross-posted @ Hard Starboard]
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