Titled “The Challenge,” the ad includes footage of Palin denouncing the “crony capitalism” running rampant in our country’s “permanent political class.”

RELATED: Roger Ailes Reportedly Furious At Palin For Not Declaring Presidential Plans On FNC

This is socialism for the very rich and the very poor, but it’s a brutal form of capitalism for the rest of us. It’s the collusion of big government, big business. It’s at the heart of President Obama’s economic vision.

We need sudden and relentless reform, and that will return power to we the people.

We need people with a proven record of reform. I served in public office in a state that had a corruption problem. I fought that corrupt system.

I took on a corrupt and compromised political class. The challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with.

The ad, which concludes with a plea to “Run Sarah Run!”, will air in Iowa beginning tomorrow.

Have a look:

h/t Michelle Malkin

In his book, Johnston quotes Sarah Palin as saying she hated her job as Governor of Alaska because she would have rather been making money instead — a sentiment that O’Donnell believes is paramount in her decision to make people think she is a viable political candidate who merits time and attention in the national spotlight.

Then, in a moment that made for some terribly awkward television, O’Donnell had a hesitant Johnston read a portion of his book aloud. And not just any portion, but a scene where he sneaks in a shower with Palin’s daughter Bristol. Later, he heads a section of the book wherein Bristol tells him, “Let’s get pregnant.” A post-modern Chaucer, that Johnston.

Oh, and there’s a bonus appearance by “Tank.”

Watch the segment, via MSNBC:

Obama told supporters at a New York fundraiser that “all that hopey changey stuff” he’d espoused during his first run for president had been genuine:

All that hopey changey stuff, as they say? That was real. It wasn’t something …it was real, you could feel it. You know it. It’s still there. Even in the midst of this hardship. But it’s hard. When I was in Grant Park that night, I warned everybody this was going to be hard, this wasn’t the end it was the beginning.

Obama added that, after a few years, “the hope poster starts fading,” that the sentiment behind it is still alive and well among Americans.

Politico’s Alexander Burns offered a spot-on assessment of the tactics at play in essentially trying to turn Palin’s words — and their negative sentiments — against her:

In a way, the combination of reviving good feelings from 2008 and spotlighting Palin-like bogeymen who scare independent voters is a decent snapshot of the Democrats’ 2012 strategy at this point.

But… will it work? Obama may have been preaching to the choir during the speech, but we can’t help but wonder whether those who already harbor negative feelings about the President (and annoyance over his “hope” campaign) will simply see this as a jab at Palin and, thus, feel further alienated.

h/t Politico

And while Texas Gov. Rick Perry of Texas continues to lead among those candidates who have officially announced their presidential campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, the poll is also (potentially) good news for Palin:

The biggest gain came for Palin, the former Alaska governor who hasn’t yet announced whether she’ll jump into the fast-changing race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.

Although she’s remained fairly mum on the subject, now that the Republican candidates are revving up for another debate tomorrow in Orlando, Florida and the deadline for announcing one’s candidacy is fast approaching, these new poll results may very well factor into Palin’s ultimate decision.

h/t The Miami Herald

The poll, conducted “under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R)” — shows that Republican voters (including the Tea Party members within the fold) do not feel that John McCain’s former running mate should make a bid for the presidential nomination.

The results of the poll, which was conducted August 29 -31, specifically included a question about Palin, who has yet to officially announce whether she will or will not run:

27. Do you think Sarah Palin should run for president in 2012 or not?

Yes 20%
No 74
(Don’t know) 6

More specifically, two-thirds of poll responders who described themselves as Tea Party voters do not think Palin should run, and 71 percent of all Republican voters say she should sit this one out. The 74 percent above reflects the response from the entire electorate.

The survey also asked responders an interesting question: Is there any candidate — official or otherwise — whom you find to be too extreme? Turns out, most people said “nope!” and a lot said they had no idea. But the candidates they did mention are fairly diverse:

28. Are there any announced or potential candidates for the Republican nomination who you feel are just too extreme to be seriously considered? If yes, who? (OPEN ENDED. DO NOT READ LIST. MULTIPLE RESPONSES ALLOWED.)

(Bachmann) 18%
(Perry) 14
(Palin) 12
(Paul) 10
(Gingrich) 5
(Romney) 4
(Cain) 3
(Santorum) 3
(Huntsman) 2
(No, None) 35
(Other) 4
(Don’t know) 22

Are you surprised by the results?

h/t FoxNews.com via WSJ.com

Well, a lot of good things happened. I mean, it was a big boost for Michele Bachmann to win the straw poll. Let’s not read too much into it though. I mean, there’s seventeen thousand people who turned out. Iowa has three million, seven thousand people. So there were a lot of people who didn’t show up at the straw poll, but nonetheless it’s a good boost for her. Momentum probably gives her a jump up in fundraising; it certainly gives her a bigger part on the national stage. She went and did five Sunday talk programs as a result.

Perry has gotten in, I think, in a very adroit fashion. He leaked it, he dominated the news leading into the straw poll the day before he made it clear he was gonna get in, and so he dominated the pre-coverage. He announced on the same day, that gave him a part in every story. You know, Michele Bachmann led, but the second paragraph in most stories was Rick Perry getting in.

And then Mitt Romney had a good performance in the debate and maintained his lead as the front-runner, so we’ve got a good field. I don’t think it’s the end, though, of the field. I think we’re likely to see several other candidate think seriously about getting in and, frankly, they have time to do so.

And who does Rove suspect will “seriously consider” joining the field by the November 22nd deadline? Former governor and Fox News contributor Sarah Palin, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan.

Watch Rove explain his reasoning (and his thoughts on President Obama being “in deep doodoo”), courtesy of Fox News:

Rickles went utterly berserk when Palin recounted the story of sneaking out of her home and losing her virginity while drunk. Later, Leno asked Palin if she knew her mother’s decision on whether or not she’d be running for President. The younger Palin had gotten into a bit of trouble for her previous comments about this very topic but, this time around, she kept relatively mum:

You know, I don’t know. It’s something that we’ve definitely addressed, but it’s just up to her, ultimately.

When Leno followed up by asking if there was any reason Sarah Palin shouldn’t run, Rickles jumped in immediately: “Because she could lose.”

Rickles continued injecting humor into an otherwise mild interview by dramatically rolling his eyes when Leno asked whether Sarah Palin’s kids were “stunned” when they discovered their mother had been chosen to be John McCain‘s running mate in 2008.

Now, we previously hoped that, based on their chemistry and banter, Ed Schultz and Micheal Steele would get a show together. And that’s inching ever closer to reality. So, now: Can Rickles and Palin have a show together? Pretty please?

Watch the clip, courtesy of NBC:

I believe that I can win a national election.

The people of America are desperate for positive change, and deserving of positive change, to get us off of this wrong track. I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around. But I do believe that I can win.

Mind you, Palin has yet to make an official bid. As for her eldest daughter Bristol’s recent claim that Palin had already made up her mind about running, Palin tells Boyer that while “Bristol wants me to run for president,” Palin herself is “still thinking about it,” citing the well-being of her family as a factor in her decision-making. In fact, a good portion of the interview is dedicated to Palin’s interactions with her husband, Todd, and their children. To wit:

But before we began, she and Todd, both working their omnipresent BlackBerrys, conducted a bit of urgent family business.

SARAH: I have to answer Piper real quick. She is not going to get her hair cut. What is she thinking?

TODD: No, she’s not.

SARAH: You need to tell her that, she’ll obey you … You told her no, Todd? OK, I’m puttin’ mine away.

The major takeaway seems to be that Palin is examining the GOP field with a shrewd eye, and weighing her options carefully. She she told Boyer about the media’s focus on potential, currently undeclared GOP candidates such as herself, “the field is not yet set.” Also of note: Palin’s “independent” streak:

You know, I rarely use the term “bipartisanship.” I use the term “independent.” Piper’s middle name is “Indie.” That’s the Alaskan way of life. Seventy-three percent of Alaskans aren’t registered Republican or Democrat, they’re independent. Todd’s not a registered Republican. Most of the people I know, they’re independent people saying, “Just use common sense.”

The interview provides an increasingly rare instance of Palin speaking directly to a member of the mainstream media (who isn’t Greta Van Susteren or Sean Hannity). As Palin’s wildly popular use of the phrase “lamestream media” would attest, there’s a reason for that:

The mainstream press is becoming less and less relevant.

I would say no to those who have lied about me. There is no need to reward bad behavior. I’ve learned. You know, once bitten, twice shy. I have learned.

h/t Newsweek

Palin’s visit to Iowa has prompted a new wave of questions about her presidential aspirations, as some in the state have suggested she would be taking the opportunity to meet with certain caucus-goers.

Singleton, who is the driving force behind Organize4Palin, told the British paper that now is the ideal time for Palin to run:

She’s the right person at this time. If you look back at Churchill’s time, in 1938 Churchill was unelectable, in 1940 he was indispensable.

I can’t see her sitting this one out. The stakes are too high. It goes back to 1940. Can you see Churchill sitting it out? It’s unthinkable. Can you see George Washington in 1776 sitting it out? Unthinkable. He wanted to be back on his farm but they said we need you to be president of the republic.

The paper also offers a revealing look at Palin’s reaction to comments her eldest daughter, Bristol, made to the hosts of Fox News’ Fox & Friends. You’ll recall that Bristol, who is making the media rounds to promote her new book, shared that her mother “definitely knows” whether or not she’ll run in 2012, but that “some things just need to stay in the family.”

Palin offered her response to her daughter’s “revelation:”

I texted Bristol, I said, “Honey, what did you say this morning on some news program?”

She said, “Oh, mom, you’ve got to watch the interview. You know how they take everything out of context.” I said, “You remember Bristol what we talk about on the fishing boat stays on the fishing boat.” I don’t know what she said.

As for the woman at the center of all this speculation? Palin is still keeping mum about her plans.

h/t The Telegraph

Iowa’s former GOP director Craig Robinson told the Daily Beast that, if this is indeed indicative of a potential Palin presidential run (and, so far, that’s highly uncertain) it may not matter that she’s going about it unconventionally:

Is [Palin] going to sit down and meet with the people you would go through if you were going to launch a presidential campaign? No, but I think she will interact with very conservative people, very active Republicans. She will be mingling with caucus-goers.

As for the film itself, Palin has already seen a rough cut of the million-dollar project, and has said she is looking forward to seeing the finished product “with fellow Americans from the heartland.”

h/t The Daily Beast

Watch SC Forward Progress’ video:

Watching the video (and noting the name of the group that uploaded it), it becomes immediately apparent that Betsy is merely a character and that the video is meant to be a joke highlighting apathetic or downright negative reactions to the possibility of a Palin presidential run. Someone might want to let the internet in on that, though. Judging from comments left by viewers, many people are having trouble deciphering between what’s genuine and what is satirical, and the intent and motivation behind both.

Here, for example, are some comments from YouTube:

And here’s some of the reaction on BuzzFeed and Facebook:

First of all, haters most jealous, the young woman playing Betsy is the human equivalent of this little bunny eating cookies, so the disparaging comment about the way she looks is nothing short of silly. Also: Insulting “Betsy” not only makes the person hurling the insult seem moderately unintelligent (Seriously? You couldn’t tell this wasn’t real?), but reflects badly on her political convictions because, like. How much of what you believe is a knee jerk reaction to something you don’t like?

Second: When will people realize that there’s a marked difference between poking fun at an attitude or a public persona and being downright insulting? Stop projecting your insecurities, citizens of the internet! Jeez! Critique without attacking. Satirize without insulting. And approach things you find online with a healthy mixture of openness and skepticism.

h/t BuzzFeed

Writes Palin:

Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the “One Nation Tour” has been cancelled. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that’s because it hasn’t been cancelled. (Good ol’ media… you never cease to amaze!)

As I said myself at the end of the east coast leg of the tour, the summer is long, and I’m looking forward to hitting the open road again. The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.

I wouldn’t think it to be such a slow news day that, what with numerous wars and serious economic woes concerning Americans, a bus is driving news stories today. The next leg of the tour continues when the time comes. In the meantime, no one should jump to conclusions – certainly not the media with their long track record of getting things wrong or just making things up.

– Sarah Palin

One factor contributing to misleading or outright incorrect reports about Palin is the reality that she mostly refuses to speak to reporters unless the interaction is on her own terms, eschewing most outlets in favor of participating in interviews with, say, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren or Real Clear Politics – in other words, with those who won’t necessarily challenge her or, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting, attack her.

In the process, some news outlets are left to either speculate about Palin’s plans or refer to unreliable sources, which can and does result to incorrect information. And that certainly benefits Palin, because it reinforces her purported mistrust of the media and her belief that, in many cases, members of the media are less than competent and/or present a clear bias against her.

You can’t play with Sarah, guys, She’ll win every time.

h/t Facebook

It is true that Palin gets more buzz than nearly any other Republican political figure right now (evidenced by her position as the most powerful TV Pundit on Mediaite’s Power Grid) but not all of the buzz she has received has been positive. As the old Native American saying goes “the wind at the top of the totem pole blows a little harder,” and not all of Palin’s buzz has been good buzz. Which, it appears, may have be taking a toll on her political standing.

Writing for the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza and Jon Cohen report:

For the first time in Post-ABC News polling, fewer than six in 10 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents see Palin in a favorable light, down from a stratospheric 88 percent in the days after the 2008 Republican National Convention and 70 percent as recently as October.

In one sense, the poll still finds Palin near the top of a list of eight potential contenders for the GOP nomination. The former vice presidential candidate scores a 58 percent favorable rating, close to the 61 percent for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and 60 percent for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and better than the 55 percent that onetime House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) received.

But Palin’s unfavorable numbers are significantly higher than they are for any of these possible competitors. Fully 37 percent of all Republicans and GOP-leaning independents now hold a negative view of her, a new high.

In another first, fewer than 50 percent of Republican-leaning independents — 47 percent — hold favorable views of Palin.

Palin hasn’t spoken about a possible presidential bid recently, but she has made the year 2012 a focus of her anti-Obama rhetoric, posting on her Facebook page that “it can’t come soon enough,” focusing on the White House’ “war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production.”

As long as Palin continues to participate in the political dialogue of the day, she will be likely be considered a presidential candidate. Though as these poll results show, her chances of getting elected (as of now) appear to be getting dimmer, not brighter.

When Walters asked her subject how she’d feel if Palin decided to run for president in 2012, Oprah gave a cagey answer: “I wouldn’t feel anything. Obviously that would be her choice.” Walters pushed a bit, asking point-blank, “But do you think that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president?”

All she got was another nonanswer: “”I’m not going to answer that question. That’s good, Barbara but I’m not going to answer.”

“I tried,” replied Walters, noting that Oprah did “sort of answer.” See the moment in the clip below, from ABC.

[h/t Huffington Post]

Like other Palin critics, Rollins thinks that Palin is “a media star and a great curiosity” rather than a great politician. He addresses the ex-governor directly in the piece, chiding her credentials (“I would have hoped somewhere along the way through the five colleges you attended that you would have learned a little history”) and criticizing the path she’s taken to a possible presidential run:

You were plucked out of political obscurity because of the whim of presidential contender John McCain, who didn’t know you and made you into an overnight sensation. You performed well for three weeks in the campaign, did better than expected against Joe Biden in the debate and then you self-destructed.

You clearly weren’t ready for prime time, but neither was your running mate. After the election, you quit your day job as governor of Alaska with 18 months left in the term and went out and made a fortune making speeches and selling a book.

It was certainly your right, and you’re not the first one to cash in on fame. Millions of Americans love you, and I am sure millions more hate you. Unfortunately, that’s what happens in politics.

You can be a contender for the Republican nomination in 2012, but you’re a long way from being the nominee. You’re going to have to beat some very formidable candidates with way more experience and far superior knowledge on issues foreign and domestic. And to rate your chances today, I would put them at “possible” but not “probable.” It’s an all-uphill battle.

Right now, polls indicate you wouldn’t carry your home state of Alaska.

And the Reagan comparisons aren’t helping. You might as well compare yourself to Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.

Rollins then lays out the differences between the Gipper and the Mama Grizzly. Palin, for example, has never starred in a feature film. Oh, and Reagan also helped to move the GOP forward in a way that Palin hasn’t yet:

He rebuilt the Republican Party after Watergate, the resignation of Richard Nixon and the defeat of Gerald Ford in 1976.

He won two electoral landslides and made the presidency work again after several failed presidencies. He also never quit anything or any job before he was done. And he was a great communicator because he not only made great speeches, he wrote many of them because it was what he believed. People listened to them and were moved by them.

He finishes by chastising Palin again, sounding a lot like a 7th grade teacher scolding a popular kid who hasn’t done his or her homework. “If you want to be a player, go to school and learn the issues,” says Rollins. “If you want to be a gadfly, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

It should be noted that Rollins is a supporter and onetime employee of Mike Huckabee—meaning that his words should be taken with an entire shaker of salt. Even so, he argues well, both in this piece and in the clip below, in which he explains his remarks to CNN’s John King. Read Rollins’s whole note at CNN.com.

Palin will be in Iowa this Saturday to promote her new book. But even Iowans can access Gawker, so that’s not what people are buzzing about. The Guardian produces some pretty convincing proof as to Palin’ actual intentions for Iowa and for 2012:

Some of her staff now appear to be putting the pieces in place in case Palin does decide to run. One of the aides, who only eats kosher food, told a local rabbi he was looking into longer term arrangements in Iowa.

“He was looking to be able to accommodate the needs of those coming down looking to set up shop here for campaigning in the coming years,” said Yossi Jacobson of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Des Moines.

Palin’s 16-stop schedule, unusually for a book tour, includes no readings in Los Angeles, New York or Washington DC, but has Palin spending time in states such as Iowa, Ohio and South Carolina.

Swooping in from Alaska to promote your book in swing-state Ohio and influential caucus and primary states like Iowa and South Carolina, while ignoring lucrative yet solidly blue California and New York, eh? Undecided, schmundecided.

(Update Jim Geraghty is now reporting that this is not true.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this, I reached out to SarahPAC to see if there was any response. It turns out there’s a big one. Mark Young of Physicians for Palin throws cold water on the whole story:

The story published in the London Guardian (“Sarah Palin drops 2012 presidency hint with staff visit to Iowa”) took me utterly by surprise because although it is a pleasant story, it appears to be a factual exaggeration of the true story.

I spoke with the Rabbi on Thursday. On Friday morning when the Rabbi went to the synagogue, he told a couple of people that I had called him up to discuss arranging a Sabbath in Iowa to promote Palin. Well, the next thing the Rabbi knows, he received a phone call from a reporter at the Washington bureau of the London Guardian newspaper asking him questions. The Rabbi was kind of amused, but wasn’t sure what they wanted because he had never had a reporter call him before. He told the reporter what he knew, but then the reporter began speculating about the meaning of what the Rabbi told him, to which the Rabbi kept saying, “maybe, I don’t know.” The reporter took those maybes as affirmatives, and that was the basis of the story in the Guardian.

As Geraghty points out, Palin and her people may one day look for office space in Iowa, but that doesn’t hasn’t come…yet.

The short exchange, in full, goes as follows:

Palin: I’m looking at the lay of the land now, and … trying to figure that out, if it’s a good thing for the country, for the discourse, for my family, if it’s a good thing.

Walters: If you ran for president, could you beat Barack Obama?

Palin: I believe so.

As ABC points out, the clip comes on the heels of this week’s New York Times Magazine cover story, in which Palin tells writer Robert Draper that she is contemplating running for president. Maybe Palin gives more information about that possible run in the Walters interview, which will air December 9 at 10 p.m. Until then, we suppose, we’ll just keep reporting on Palin’s apparent indecision.

Steve Krakauer pondered the same question this week, guessing that she wouldn’t run but rather use her influence to get a Republican into the White House. Yet Shushannah Walshe‘s Daily Beast report casts doubt upon the show’s true motives. Here’s how GOP strategist Terry Sullivan tells it:

It’s definitely one big cable buy. When Governor [Mitt] Romney was talking about running for president, he had sent out a DVD where he was sledding in Utah with the family, talking about whether he would run or not, and everybody was baking cookies and hanging out. The difference is she has a production company willing to foot the bill for it.

Given Palin’s flair for competition, it’s more than likely that Sarah Palin’s Alaska will find her out-sledding, out-baking, and out-hanging Romney, her potential 2012 primary contender. Walshe agrees, while also noting that the show is a chance for Americans to see the “softer, pre-Tea Party Palin” that they grew to love. The former aide thinks that the show might even attract people who didn’t grow to love Palin by “reestablishing her with the general public.”

And though the TLC show (and producer Mark Burnett) stressed its strictly educational, pro-Alaska stance, it’s laughable to think the program will be apolitical. Even Palin acknowledges the show’s implications, albeit in her own coy fashion. When Karl Rove questioned Palin’s gravitas, she asked Fox News’ Chris Wallace, “Wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor?” If that isn’t Palinese for, “I can and will be president,” then nothing is.

They also shared something else: The experience of running for higher office as a woman. The clip starts off with Ferraro minimizing the GOP wave of victory and politely disagreeing with Palin, who gave “Obamacare” credit for tanking the Dems, but they agree on the challenges of Running While Female. Megyn Kelly, after referencing the tribulations of Krystal Ball (“She had moronic college photos – she’s a Democrat”), asked the two women about their experiences. Ferraro said that not much had changed, and noted that she’d been “outraged by how Hilary had been treated during the primary”; Palin took the opportunity to wax feminist, thank Ferraro for her part in breaking the glass ceiling and invoking “the shoulders of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony” upon which future glass-shattering women — like her! — would stand. Then Kelly if they thought they’d see “a female president in our time” and Ferraro hat-tipped coyly, citing 2012 or 2016, as Palin sat up straighter and seemed to actually smack her lips. It was…historic. The full clip is below; the feminism discussion begins at approximatley 5:50.

“You know, I have not decided what I’m going to do in 2012. I don’t think any of the potential candidates have. I think, still, it is too early for anybody to get out there declaring what their intentions are. For me, Mary, it’s going to entail a discussion with my family, a real close look at the lay of the land, and to consider whether there are those with that common sense, conservative, pro-Constitution passion—whether there are any candidates out there who can do the job, and I’ll get to be their biggest supporter and biggest helpmate if they will have me.

“Or whether there’s nobody willing to do it, to make the tough choices and not care about what the critics are going to say about you … If there’s nobody else to do it, then of course I would believe that we should do this.”

So there you have it: another resounding “maybe.” Hart followed Palin’s meandering answer by showing her the cover of last week’s New York Magazine, which advertises a story about how “Sarah Barracuda” could get elected in 2012. “How could it happen, and who you could blame,” Palin reads. “That’s about right!” Video is below. [h/t Entertainment Tonight]

Earlier today, Rove told The Daily Telegraph that Palin’s upcoming reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, might cause prospective voters to view the former governor as a less-than-serious candidate.

“With all due candor, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of ‘that helps me see you in the Oval Office’,” he said.

And that wasn’t all the conservative stalwart had to say about Palin:

He said Mrs Palin had done a “terrific job” in 2008 when Senator John McCain took her from near obscurity to the vice-presidential nomination, but added: “Being the vice-presidential nominee on the ticket is different from saying ‘I want to be the person at the top of the ticket’.

“There are high standards that the American people have for it [the presidency] and they require a certain level of gravitas, and they want to look at the candidate and say ‘that candidate is doing things that gives me confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world’.”

Will these remarks be damaging to Palin? It’s tough to say. Karl Rove is still an incredibly prominent Republican, but his influence is not what it used to be. Other comments that he’s made recently—such as that the Tea Party is “not sophisticated”—indicate that the adviser could be falling out of touch with what his party has become.

But either way, Rove’s assessment does make a lot of sense—especially considering that in the trailer for her series, Palin specifically says that she would rather be snowshoeing and moose-hunting than stuck “in some stuffy old political office.”

[h/t MSNBC]

The joke may have been obvious, but the execution was flawless — which is more than you can usually say for Saturday Night Live. Last night, the show got off to a shaky start with a plodding President Obama and China press conference that dithered with gay jokes, followed by a musical theatre-type monologue from host Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in which he sounded like Kermit the Frog and committed acts of physical comedy. But then, a digital short! That means tons of editing and high-quality footage and no line flubs and celebrity cameos and… voilà. Laughs. A topical movie parody paired with the author of the biggest book in the land: Sarah Palin, 2012, Glenn Beck, Going Rogue — just watch:

Leaving aside the merits of present-day Sarah Palin’s argument, two of the responses to her piece got my attention. First, HuffPo’s Art Brodsky posited the publication of Palin’s essay as further evidence of the decline of the Washington Post:

How does the Post regain its equilibrium? How does it recover not only from this disaster but also from the dismissal of popular blogger Dan Froomkin, whose sacking led to great protests from the readers the Post execs didn’t think existed?

Why, by putting the soon-to-be ex-gov on the op-ed page, one of the prime places of real estate left in the newspaper world? Not to put too fine a point on it — is there any sane person left over in the Post management?

I found the question intriguing, but not for the reasons Brodsky gives. Agree with her or not, cop to her expertise or not, Palin’s interconnectedness with energy policy is indisputable, making her voice newsworthy.

What I found interesting was this take, from my old stomping grounds, Politics Daily:

Palin Op-Ed Blasts Obama: A Prelude to 2012?

In case anyone doubts the presidential ambition of her save-the-economy essay, the last words should clear things up: “Yes we can. Just not with Barack Obama’s energy cap-and-tax plan.” Sarah Palin is serving notice that it’s a long while till 2012, with plenty of time to repair an image or, for that matter, create an entirely different one.

This reminded me of two incidents during the 2008 Presidential campaign, in  which the New York Times rejected op-ed pieces from candidates. The first rejected op-ed was from the Clinton campaign, a decision with which I disagreed. The second was from the McCain campaign, using the same rationale under stronger circumstances.

In both cases, the Times objected because they judged that each piece essentially consisted of little more than a campaign press release.

By this standard, if you buy Politics Daily’s premise, the Washington Post could be seen as simply renting its op-ed page to the Palin ’12 campaign for free. It’s an interesting, but thin, premise.

Rather than attacking Palin’s standing or expertise, Brodsky might have been better served making his point on the merits of the piece. While she attacks the idea of cap and trade that she campaigned on months ago, she presents absolutely no alternative to that policy’s central purpose, fighting global climate change. As John Kerry points out, she fails to address it at all.

Does this fit in with the Washington Post’s editorial guidelines for op-ed pieces? Let’s see:

Among the things we look for are timeliness (is it pegged to something in the news?), resonance (is it something that will interest Post readers?) and freshness of perspective (is it an argument we haven’t heard many times before?). You don’t need to have special expertise in a topic. But explaining how your background or experience informs your point of view can make for a more effective op-ed. You also don’t need to have an important title — and having an important title doesn’t mean we’ll publish your op-ed. In fact, because we realize that senators, business leaders, heads of state and the like have access to various platforms where they can express their views, we hold them to a particularly high standard when considering whether to publish them in The Post.

While Brodsky’s premise is wildly overstated, it’s tough to argue that Palin’s piece meets this bar, and tougher to argue that her clickability didn’t play a major part in the Post’s decision to carry it.

On the other hand, in the HuffPo and Politics Daily articles, both authors make the observation/assumption that Palin likely used a ghostwriter in composing the WaPo piece. This may be ignorance on my part, but I don’t think that’s a fair assumption. While it is quite common for politicians to use ghostwriters for memoirs and speeches, I’ve read nothing to indicate this is true of op-ed pieces. Even if it is a fair assumption, it isn’t one I see made about other politicians’ op-ed pieces. Either it’s commonplace, and not worth mentioning, or it isn’t, and thus worth checking.

I asked Governor Palin, via Twitter, if she could confirm that she had written the piece. She hasn’t responded, as she probably gets a million tweets an hour, but it was worth a shot. In any case, it was an insulting assumption, made without basis. It’s the kind of thing that feeds into Palin’s persecution complex, whereas criticism on the merits would be more than sufficient.

This post originally appeared at DailyDose.us. Minor edits have been made.