Are We Finally Rid of Sarah Palin?

While Sarah Palin continues to have a tempestuous love affair with herself, the Washington Post/ABC News poll I cited yesterday indicates that 2/3's of Republicans do NOT want to see a Palin campaign for the presidency. Rational people figured out Palin's total unfitness for office - any office, in fact - long ago, so it's at least a little encouraging that even the idiots of the Republican Party base seem to be figuring out that Palin needs to leave the political scene and join the cast of a really poor quality reality show. Palin makes some of the "Real House Wives" crowd look highly intellectual and rational. Politico looks at what is hopefully Palin's swan song from the serious political stage. Meanwhile, I will never forgive John McCain for propelling a self-absorbed moron like Palin to the national stage. Here are some highlights from Politico:

Sarah Palin hasn’t closed the door yet on a presidential bid. But few Republicans appear to be waiting for her answer.

Never was it clearer than Tuesday, when Chris Christie’s announcement that he would not run in 2012 prompted a throng of strategists to conclude the Republican field was finally set – never mind Palin’s indecision. A new poll published on the same day revealed that two thirds of Republicans don’t want her to run.

Even as Republicans continue to cast about for new options, only a distinct minority are gazing longingly toward Wasilla – or wherever else Palin is in her secretive, largely apolitical travel schedule.

“She stirs up a lot of conservatives in the base, but I don’t think conservatives are looking to her as a presidential nominee who can save the conservative movement,” said Chuck Muth, the Nevada-based conservative activist. “What niche in the conservative movement does Sarah Palin fill that’s not already filled by one of the other candidates?”

Palin sounded unconcerned about the pressure of timing last week when she rolled past her own end-of-September deadline for deciding on the presidential race. She told Fox News that she still has to consider whether being a candidate would “prohibit [her] from being out there, out of a box, not allowing handlers to shape me.”

In the meantime, more and more primary voters appear to be drifting out of Palin’s reach. Indeed, as she drags out her 2012 decision, a politician who has often complained of being talked about unfavorably is risking an even grimmer fate: Not being talked about at all. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week, only 31 percent of Republican primary voters said they wanted Palin to run for president. Sixty-six percent said she shouldn’t get into the race.

Ed Rollins, the former campaign manager for Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, predicted flatly that Palin would not be the GOP’s 2012 standard-bearer, whether or not she decides to try for it. “At best she could attract some Bachmann voters, some Cain voters and maybe come out as the tea party candidate, but she is not going to end up being the nominee,” Rollins said.

If Palin does run, it will be for one reason - to keep herself in the media coverage. She is so self-absorbed that the worse thing that could happen to he is that her 15 minutes of fame is over and she's forgotten by history other than an example of a disastrous candidate in 2008 who should never have been on the GOP ticket.