"If the primaries were this year, I suspect she'd be nominated," a senior adviser to one of Sarah Palin's potential rivals confides.
One the one hand, Palin is less likely than any of the plausible Republican alternatives to beat President Obama in 2012. On the other hand, if conditions are bad enough -- say, persistently high unemployment -- even Palin could win. And that could be, to put it mildly, a historical disaster.