You've all read Chapter 1: Sarah Palin, Game Change
[no need to beat on the dead grizzly over that one. old man yells at electoral college, etc.]
Chapter 2: Post Game Change, the Intermission
[Quick flashback to the Summer of 2011.]
• Sarah Palin is making money from speaking engagements across the Country, fueling speculation among the Tea-Party set that she may run for President.
• An interesting instance of Schrödinger's Political Cheshire Cat appears/disappears in which Ms. Palin is both running and not running at the same time.
• Sarah Palin is actively courted by the GOP to NOT run for President in 2012. (Afraid to upset the Grizzly Mama on the one hand, yet really not wanting her in the race on the other. Smoke blowing up her skirt of the highest order.)
• November 2011 (widely determined from the 'Waiting for Gore•Dot 2007' timetable as the last possible chance to jump into the race) comes and goes.
• Sarah Palin is NOT a Presidential candidate for 2012.
• Sarah Palin endorses Newt, almost.
• Ms. Palin no longer has an avenue to make money because all of the (name your gas - hydrogen sulfide?) has been taken from the room by the Republican Primary.
• By not running she does not become collateral waste in the way that Cain, Perry (or is it Parry?), Gingrich, et al. are about to become at the hands of Mitt Romney.
continues below the political tracery
• Mitt drops a boatload of other people's money (having learned the hard way in 2008 to not spend his own!) to get the Republican Nomination (or bully everyone else off the ticket).
• Sarah is neither picked for veep, nor invited to attend Tampa for the RNC.
[fast forward through some more advertising agony]
• Mitt goes on to drop even more of other people's money to lose the Barack Obama by less than he'd have lost by if he hadn't spent that kind of money. Or so the theory goes.
[fast forward through the GOP's stages of grief from losing seats in both the Senate and House]
• Zombie Sarah returns. After all, she wasn't on the ticket and they lost. Ipso Facto, if she'd been on it...
Chapter 3: Myth of the Lost Campaign, Sarah Returns
You see, Schrödinger Sarah can now tour the country up through November 2015 yet again without having to declare, while making money speaking about whatever political tea party nonsense she likes. After all, she can see the Presidency from her house.
Mitt Romney has given Sarah a new avenue for making money, for grifting the Tea Party "base," and for becoming quasi-relevant in the Conservative Media Circus.
[UPDATE] The big question is whether she's apt enough to take it, and whether anyone remembers the Half-Governor from Wasilla at this point.
Oh, the other big winner is Ann Coulter, who declared that Romney would lose early on.
And my popcorn stock has nowhere to go but up!