Sarah Palin's speaking fees must not to be up to par for the former half-term Alaska governor, because she's threatening to run for political office again.
Speaking with Fox Business Network's Greg Varney on Tuesday, Palin asserted that another political bid may yet be in store. Asked whether her fierce detractors discouraged her from pursuing a political career, Palin told Varney that the opposite was true.
“Bless their hearts, those haters out there, they don’t understand that it invigorates me,” Palin said. “It wants me to get out there and defend the innocent," she added, channeling her inner Ted Kennedy.
“[T]he more they’re pouring on, the more I’m going to bug the crap out of them by being out there with a voice, with a message, hopefully running for office in the future, too,” Palin then proclaimed.
Here's a prediction: The acquisitive Palin, who has about as much interest in mounting a political comeback as she does in opening an artisanal pickle shop in Portland, will opt instead to continue raking in money through phoned-in, scatterbrained speeches, TV deals and book fees. And pretending that she could once again enter the political arena is just one means of stoking public interest.
Except it's hard to tell if any serious observer thinks there's one iota of likelihood that Palin will run for anything again. She teased a 2012 presidential bid until late in 2011, by which point it was already abundantly clear that Palin envisioned a future as a conservative celebrity, not commander in chief. She followed that disingenuous flirtation with a wholly unbelievable claim that she was open to running against Democratic Sen. Mark Begich in 2014. You'll note that Palin is not on the ballot this year.
And why would she be? Even if Palin actually wanted to return to elected office, she knows that she stands virtually no chance of success, either nationally or in Alaska. The heavily Republican state actually prefers Hillary Clinton over Palin in a hypothetical 2016 presidential face-off, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released in August. Only 36 percent of Alaskans viewed the former governor favorably -- a finding roughly in line with Palin's national numbers.
So the GOP's onetime rising star doesn't have a political future. Something tells me that won't deter breathless speculation about 2016 -- or 2020, 2024 ...
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