Presidential contenders know that the journey to the Oval Office begins with an Iowa office. As such, the fact that Sarah Palin is now searching for an office in Des Moines, IA, has people raising their eyebrows right off of their foreheads. People like The Guardian, who report that two of Palin’s aides are “looking into office space and other logistical needs for the coming year.” Let the horror and/or some amusement begin! (Update Jim Geraghty is now reporting that this is not true.) 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:

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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.

Tags: 2012, Iowa, Sarah Palin