I'm not the only political junkie posting on TPM that is speculating about the Palin team game plan..  We all can detect when a typical politician is making his\her move toward some position of power...First more appearances with the talking heads, more public appearances, the authoring of a book(s) etc.  The game of politics hasn't really changed in decades -- just the media methodology

I, at one time, was an average chess player.  I've pretty-much used the process of chess logic throughout my life.   Politics "is" logic , money and luck.  For the life of me, I can't figure out where Palin is headed!  In the preceding paragraphs,  I'm going to define Palin as two types of personalities which were aptly defined by my hero, Eric Hoffer. (1902-1983)  The excerpts have been purloined from "The True Believer" 1951.  Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy were two of Hoffer's students.  What Hoffer wrote in the 1950's and 60's is applicable to these times.  Perhaps, my estimation of Palin's personality traits are way out of line...I'm open to enlightenment.

The Inordinately Selfish.

The inordinately selfish are particularly susceptible to frustration.  The more selfish a person, the more poignant his disappointments.  It is the inordinately selfish, therefore, who are likely to be the most persuasive champions of selflessness.
The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances to lose faith in their own selves.  They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause.  And though it be a faith of love and humility they adopt, they can can be neither loving or humble.

Or

The Ambitious Facing Unlimited Opportunities

Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as  a paucity or lack of opportunities.  When opportunities are apparently unlimited, there is an inevitable depreciation of the present.  The attitude is: "All that I am doing  or possibly can do is chicken feed compared with what is left undone."  Such is the frustration which broods over gold camps and haunts taut minds in boom times.Hence the remarkable fact that, joined with the ruthless self-seeking  which seems to be the main-spring of gold hunters, land-grabbers and other get-rich-quick enthusiasts, there is an excessive readiness for self-sacrifice and united action.  Patriotism, racial solidarity, and even the preaching of revolution find a more ready response among people who see limitless opportunities spread out before them than among those who move within the fixed limits of a familiar, orderly and predictable pattern of existence.