My conjecture is that Palin has a future as a national figure in the GOP, and that she'll find a friendly and financially generous base waiting for her among the interests who tried to sell us Fred Thompson.
McCain's selection of Palin is not like a Hail Mary pass, but a first round draft pick intended to start rebuilding the GOP team for the coming seasons... 2010, 2012, and beyond. McCain is evidently smart enough to realize the odds are strongly against him this November, and that any VP choice would do little to influence the outcome.
My own non-scientific straw polling indicates that Palin was the first choice among the blogosphere's cadre of Fred Thompson supporters. Here's the reasoning.
Some of you might recognize my alias because I've been announcing various IRV straw polls from the DailyKos site over the past year. I've also announced GOP-relevant polls at RedState. (Full disclosure: I'm a pro-diplomacy, pro-science, pro-choice, pro-freedom Democrat). During the primaries, Thompson supporters dominated all the polls at my site that weren't swamped by Ron Paul supporters. Paul supporters were typically referred by links from their own sites, while the other votes came straight from RedState or email links. If you were reading diaries at RedState back then, it's no stretch to regard it as a pro-Thompson site. During the primaries, they seemed to despise Romney.
My first two GOP VP polls after the primaries were swarmed by referrals by Mike Huckabee support sites. But the Huckabeee swarm didn't show up for the last GOP VP straw poll. So I consider that result more representative of the hard core of RedState's membership.
Palin needed 8 rounds to win, but was a strong consensus candidate throughout. Romney was in 2nd place, but the results of the IRV ranking system indicate that his candidacy would have been polarizing.
Palin can legitimately claim to be a reform-minded, cut-government-waste "maverick" in the spirit of 2000 McCain's candidacy. She's also an appealing, energetic woman who's been a clutch player in a variety of situations... from playing varsity basketball in High School to raising 5 kids. Her straitforwardness makes a great first impression. In that sense, she's the kind of Republican many Independents and some Democrats would be open to consider.
She's also a hard-liner against abortion rights who supports teaching Cretonism ... oops, Creationism... in public schools. That alienates her from lots of Independents and Democrats, but forever endears her to the religious right.
McCain might personally have preferred Tom Ridge, or Lieberman, or Colin Powell, but the hard-right Christian base simply wouldn't tolerate a pro-choice VP candidate. It could have destroyed the party.
Given the persistent ambivalence toward Romney (and McCain's alleged dislike of him), it didn't make sense to give him the inside track for the starting position in 2012. Choosing Palin lets the GOP stalwarts put a fresh face on their party, because it's obvious that they're going to have run far and fast from the Bush legacy.
So, once again, my conjecture is that Palin has a future as a national figure in the GOP, and that she'll find a friendly and financially generous base waiting for her among the interests who tried to sell us Fred Thompson.