Palin for President?

I'm sure I'm not the first one to think this, but I just watched Sarah Palin make a surprise appearance on the FOX News show, "The Five", and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that she planning a run for the presidency.

First, while her conservative rhetoric remains the same, confrontational and reliably so, I think her public image has softened a great deal nevertheless.  Through her considerable media exposure everyone in America now knows who Sarah Palin is.  As a result, it's no longer possible for the Left and their allies in the elite press to sustain the same caricature they created in 2008.  Moreover, it'll be much more difficult for them to manufacture a new one.  Most importantly, I think she knows all of this as well.

Next, whether you agree with her views or not, it's plain that over the past four years she's very  deliberately educated herself about national and international issues.  She now speaks and writes of them with more fluency and more authority than she did when she first became a national figure.

Third, she very publicly encouraged a vote for Newt in the South Carolina party for the explicit purpose of lengthening the GOP culling process.  Now, she consistently, and I think coyly,  argues that it's better for the party and for the country that the process continue, through the summer if necessary.

All of which suggests to me that she's banking on a brokered convention in Tampa from which she'll emerge the Republican nominee by acclamation.

Stay tuned!