Palin would get 7% in Iowa, 6% in New Hampshire and drop out before South Carolina in 2012 primaries

Don't kid yourself if you think Sarah Palin might be the Republican nominee in 2012. While she would be the ideal candidate for Obama to run against since he would absolutely pulverize her, she would have to go through what is always a nasty primary season.

Her credentials as a governor who dropped out and quit halfway into her service would be a constant issue with what looks to be a pretty lopsided group of governors such as:

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota
Former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida
Governor Rick Perry of Texas
Former Governor Gary E. Johnson of New Mexico
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana
Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas
Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts
Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi
Former Governor George Pataki of New York
Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2012

Yes, there will be other candidates who were not senators, but if you think that this list of possible candidates with gubernatorial records WON'T bring up that she quit halfway in debates and ads if she is a front runner, you don't understand politics.

Her poll numbers would sink even more if she does what she would probably do... whine that she is being picked on.

Iowa caucus voters would send the message that she is a failure. New Hampshire voters would go for Romney. She would run out of funds to continue on.

So let her make her money now and align herself with wackjobs. She probably knows she's not going to ever be in a national campaign that is viable.

do you really thing if Jeb ran people would vote for him?

If she won Iowa, she could win the nomination.

Seriously.

And how many dissatisfied right wing voters could she inspire (to not vote at all because they were never satisfied with the other choices?)

I live in Iowa, and the Republican caucus-goers are dominated by right--wing Fundie nutjobs.

Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses and so did Pat Roberson.

Yeah, that Pat Robertson.

I predict that Palin would win the Iowa caucuses. The other candidates would split up the vote--but
a large contingent of nutjobs would rally around her.

Huckabee has the "pro-life" angle down. He can squash Palin for being a quitter and still get their vote. Pawlenty certainly would do well being a neighbor since he's just as theocratic.

I spent time and participated as a witness in 2004 and 2008 caucus elections in Iowa and did lots of canvassing leading up to both events. My sense is that Iowans don't like quitters and with plenty of male governors running against Palin, the issue of quitting will sink her like a falling avalanche.

If you think Romney and Huckabee wouldn't do ads non-stop on her being a quitter...

She's got a metric shit-ton of baggage to run ads against.

They will tear her apart.

with 25-30% of the vote if enough people run and, because of the prevalence of winner take all rules, win the nomination.

It works really well for her right now to blame all criticism on the evil liberals, but that ain't gonna fly when it's a bunch of fellow Republicans who want her out of their way. She was not vetted at all by the McCain team and there is a lot of ammo out there that they would not hesitate to use.

Her 15 minutes aren't up yet, and she's grabbing as much cash as she can before the buzzer goes off.