She's too powerful to ignore, and too (fill-in-the-blank) to take seriously.
She is - in a word yet again whispered rather than uttered - "Dangerous."
Sarah Palin, to the extent that she was ever an asset for the Republicans, has now become a liability. Shhhh. It's true. The lady is in the good graces of a pretty small group. As Kathleen Parker puts it, her main constituency is "over-45 white men." More than one Republican big-shot is describing her as problem for the party.
Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama recently had the audacity to assert what heretofore had been relegated to whispers behind closed doors: "Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate."
Bachus, who is likely to replace Barney Frank as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, noted that Palin endorsed some Senate candidates who couldn't possibly win, such as Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. O'Donnell, of course, is only the most extreme example of Tea Party mischief. She didn't have a chance in Haiti of becoming a U.S. senator, but Palin Power put her in the nominee's seat, defeating nine-term Rep. Mike Castle, the establishment candidate.
Then there's the triumph of Harry Reid instead of his projected loss to a "real Republican" candidate and The Alaska Show, where (another) Palin-backed candidate is in trouble. It's entertaining for the lower 48 but not pleasant show for Republicans.
Bachus - whose office has since tried to play down his remarks - wasn't the first to point out the fatal flaw of Tea Party ambition. Karl Rove was vilified for not initially supporting O'Donnell and for criticizing the Tea Party's principle-over-pragmatism approach. The rather obvious message: Nominating people who can't win is . . . self-defeating.
But Bachus, possibly the highest-ranking member of Congress to confront the obvious, or to tempt the fates that now await him, was brave to speak foul of the princess party girl as he now invites the considerable scorn of the new and improved GOP base.
Palin is now preparing for the heavy task of being president by tweeting comments on America's foreign and economic policies.
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Meanwhile, back home in Alaska... Palin's guy, Joe Miller, isn't giving up.
Another 91,000 voters wrote in their preferred candidate in the election, giving "write-in" - and possibly Murkowski - an initial lead of more than 11,000 votes over Republican and tea party favorite Joe Miller. In addition, election officials were tallying more than 30,000 absentee votes late Tuesday night.
But no one actually knows what all those people wrote in, leaving this race a cliffhanger more than a week after Election Day. Murkowski hopes there will be enough perfectly colored dots and properly spelled names to give her the unambiguous victory she has already claimed.
Miller, meanwhile, has made clear that he will contest every "Murklewski" in the bunch. Already, he has compiled a litany of wrongs in preparation for a legal fight, and he filed suit Tuesday in federal court, trying to block election officials from using their discretion in determining a voter's intent.
