Speaking of Palin, I wrote a friend yesterday after reading Frank Rich's Sunday column "Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/opinion/21rich.html:

So maybe the GOP “establishment” (the responsible rapists and plunderers of the country, that is) won’t be able to stop her.  Perhaps they, with Obama’s tone-deaf assistance, really have succeeded in creating a sort of Frankenstein Know-Nothing Genie in this country that can’t be stuffed back in the bottle. 

This, after writing to the same friend a couple of weeks ago that if I were guessing this far out, I would think the Republican establishment will try to get someone like Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota nominated.  Why?  Because he is a governor (taken as presumptively reassuring even though Bush II of course was also a governor), plus he is not well known (meaning easier to define as someone acceptable to the GOP establishment types and financial elites but with just enough raw meat tossed in to be acceptable to the Tea Party shock troops given how much they are driven by hatred for Obama). 

My take was that Palin was much too uncontrollable and scary for the GOP establishment and financial elites to accept, that Romney is not rescuable as someone who could do anything but trigger a revolt from a lot of hard right and Tea Party types, and Gingrich is not rescuable even by the GOP PR machine, which is far more sophisticated, powerful and effective than it was when it rehabilitated Richard Nixon in the 1960s.  Huckabee doesn't seem full of enough disdain/hatred for much of the party's base's tastes and is also mistrusted as not reliable by the establishment and financial elites (too much of a conscience).  Who am I leaving out?