Any Presidential candidate the Republican Party offers in 2012 will be a sacrifice to the Gods of elections.  Someone has to be the standard bearer but the 2012 standard bearer will be going into battle without an army behind him or her.  Repubican leadership is taking more deferments for this unwinnable electoral war.  Obama's Presidency is hitting its stride, the tools of incumbency are available to him, and, quite frankly, Republicans don't offer Americans earning under $1,000,000 a year a logical reason to vote for them.

After years of lockstep voting, self-adoration, and Louis XIV-meets-Ayn-Rand ideology, it has been impossible to distinguish a real leader of the pack.  No one steps forward with ideas that aren't vetted by the Republican cabal.  Now they must pay the price.

The back-of-the-envelope list of candidates is winnowing out all the pretenders.  Viable candidates know they would be cannon fodder in a useless campaign.  Somewhere on the Venn Diagram of government there must be overlapping circles of intelligent people and Republicans.  The few people remaining in this small oval of society know the Republican Party platform is a mess and the Two Santa Claus Theory has destroyed America.  Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt are dead.  David Stockman's time has passed.

Enter Sarah Palin.  She stands outside the small oval, she really doesn't understand leadership or facts, she is a media machine, she'll do anything politically for money, and she has no introspection.  In other words, she's the perfect Republican candidate.  Unfortunately, she has two preeminent traits that few mortals can match.  She is blindly ambitious to the nth degree and she is a survivor like the survivors after a nuclear blast.

Her ambition and self-preservation skills should tell her not to run for President.  She knows she is playing with an empty and inexperienced hand against a formidable opponent. She knows she will lose and be exiled into the Dan Quayle Home for Irrelevant Republicans.

What to do?  Sarah Palin just bought a $1.7 million home in Scottsdale, Arizona and assembled a lightweight team of election acolytes.  Some promotional video about her stunning achievements as half a Governor of Alaska and Mayor of Wasilla is about to be released in Iowa.  Is it a run for President?  Not if she's the Sarah Palin I suspect.

Why did she move to Arizona?  Why does she want to live in a xenophobic state with a self-imploding economic model designed by politicians who are clueless about the noble concept of government?  Why does she want to live in, arguably, the most radically conservative area in the country south of Northern Idaho?

Could she want to run for Jon Kyl's Senate seat?  He's giving it up.  Could she want to be John McCain's fawning junior Senator?  Could she want four years of profound Senatorial experience prior to a wide-open run for the Presidency in 2016?  Is she that cagey? You decide.