Sarah Palin’s July 4th resignation, with little explanation beyond, “Many just accept that lame duck status, and they hit that road… They draw a paycheck. They kind of milk it. And I’m not going to put Alaskans through that,” seems strange. The AP headline suggests she’s gearing up for a presidential campaign. As usual, Mark Steyn offers a far better postulation.

I’m a fan of Sarah Palin, but I hope she doesn’t run in 2012. I’m also a Romney fan, and we know what a short memory the press has. Aware that Palin’s damaged goods after the ravaging media and Hollywood elites put her through last year, how much you wanna bet she suddenly becomes the quirky underdog versus Romney, capitalist tool with a soul as black as night?

Not like it matters. No GOP candidate will get much face time in 2012, with the networks (and any newspaper still in business) so busy trumpeting the glorious achievements of Obama’s first four years. Maybe in 2016… though I’m not as optimistic as Victor Davis Hanson that Palin can grow from a refreshing conservative talker to “a charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight.”

My bigger concern is the health of the nation’s elite. What if Sarah Palin announces she’ll never run for national office again? With Dubya at home on the ranch and the Republican party in a state of disarray, on whom will our progressive betters loose their bile? I fear we’d more likely see a spike in ulcer-related deaths in California and D.C. than any acknowledgment that Obama is an arrogant statist, Biden’s a horrendous VP, or Democratic Congressmen are at least as dumb as Republicans.