Will She Run? I Doubt It

Sarah Palin is making the rounds in Iowa and New Hampshire again. Tonight, she's speaking to the Tea Party in a much-ballyhooed event that some people think will be an announcement that she's running for president.

John Fund of Newsmax.com doesn't think so.

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. For 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, the consternation she’s caused is sweet revenge.

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."

Fund thinks she'll wind up endorsing Rick Perry. Slate's David Weigel thinks a Perry endorsement will serve to twist the knife in Michele Bachman.

For all her cognitive faults, I have to believe that Sarah Palin understands she won't be elected president. She must know that any influence she can have on the nation is as a celebrity, not as a government official.

But that doesn't mean she's saying no, not anytime soon, anyway. As long as she can keep us guessing, she will retain her ability to stay on the news and rake in cash—cash that she can use next year to support candidates who bow before her she likes. As soon as she admits she's not running, most of that goes away. Heck, even if she does decide to run, she'll find she gets a lot less attention than she does now, because she'll only be one of a group of candidates, not the media queen she is now.

 

So don't expect an announcement either way, particularly this weekend. My guess is that sometime this fall, when it finally becomes clear to everyone else that it's way too late to mount a presidential campaign anyway, she make a "major announcement" that she's not going to run. As for endorsing someone else, don't expect that until sometime next winter, after the first few primaries have winnowed the field to just a couple of contenders.