Great News for Palin: GOP Poll Snubs Her

In a new survey of 109 Republican movers and shakers, not one named Sarah Palin as the likely presidential nominee in 2012. This is fabulous news for her, writes Nate Silver. After all, "2010/12 is "shaping up to be an anti-establishment cycle," he writes, and if the powers that be thumb their noses at Palin, that only helps her already "decent" chances to win the nomination. In short, she just doesn't need the establishment.

Say what you will about her, Palin "is the best equipped to bridge the divide between the Tea Party and the Republican Party," writes Silver for FiveThirtyEight.com. "In some ways, indeed, the 'message' that she unveiled in 2008: a mish-mash of populism, everywomanism, and paranoia—coupled with a light touch on policy specifics—has proven to be highly prescient in terms of everything that has come thereafter." (More Sarah Palin stories.)