Sarah Palin’s Magic Bus

**Posted by Phineas

You may have heard that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is about to embark on a “One Nation” (1) bus tour of historic sites in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. Here’s the roll-out video:

Many are speculating that this may be a prelude to announcing her candidacy for president. I don’t think there’s any “may be” about it: I think she’s 95% in and this plus her documentary (which, contrary to the MSM slander, she neither commissioned nor paid for) are the final “testing the waters’ to gauge reaction. Jim Geraghty in his Morning Jolt newsletter thinks the only thing that could change her mind would be the effect on her family and that this bus tour might be a way to measure that:

My first reaction was that the book tour wasn’t ipso facto evidence that Palin was running for president; in her Greta Van Susteren interview, Palin suggested that concerns over her family were what was holding her back. Does a bus tour mean that issue has been resolved? Maybe. But I think only Palin and her family know for sure. As I speculated, maybe this is a “dress rehearsal” — if the family goes through the experience of the bus tour and emerges unscathed, then the campaign is a go.

As I’ve made clear in the past, I greatly admire her (2) and think she’d be a fine president — and not just by comparison to the low bar set by the current occupant of the office. She’s my preferred candidate (3). Whether she can win the nomination and the general election is another thing, and that’s for the voters to decide, not pundits and would-be pundits — including me.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep you posted on how the tour goes.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: Go, ‘Cuda!

(1) Take that, John Edwards.

(2) Yes, even after “The Resignation.” As I’ve said, that’s a non-issue for me until someone can convince me otherwise by explaining in detail and with facts what she should have done given the Alaska ethics law at the time and the concerted campaign to destroy her that exploited that law.

(3) But, if she doesn’t run or does but loses the nomination, there are others I could easily support: Tim Pawlenty for one, who not only has a good record as governor but also is showing more feistiness than I ever expected.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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