Palin is the only person who could establish a viable third party that would win seats the very first election.
The GOPe could be the third party in a matter of two or three national elections.
And I have no problem with calling it the T.E.A. Party.
Not to say she could be a or even the leading light in a new Conservative / Constitutional / Liberty Party. But real political parties are formed out of a set of core principles and usually one overriding cause, and then it draws off the disgruntled adherents of an existing one till it diminishes and is replaced.
So, what would be the core principles of this new party which the GOP power structure is too coopted to pay more than lip service to? And besides Palin who will be the leaders that can be drawn from the Republican (Conservative wing), Democratic (remnant Southern wing), and Libertarian (Sane wing) parties with the experience and profile to form it?
One constituency (very important word if one has any intention of actually winning elections) that was a key to the successful formation of the Republican Party in the 1850's was northern free men desiring the protection from the competition that would be created by extension of slavery to the territories and existing free States. The Democrats were on the pockets of the Slavers and the Whigs were anything but working class. Amnesty for illegal aliens is at least as great if not more of a threat to the same type of people as slavery was back then.
The working and tax paying citizen of this country is threatened on all sides by a) cheap imported quasi-slave Mexican labor, b) an excessively open trade policy which will not even hear of providing protections and incentives to American industry, and c) the draining of his and her substance by a tax and entitlement system that coddles the unproductive and punishes the producers (all with the active support of their $2,000 suit labor "leaders").
I think this is the constituency Palin has been trying to address but has been largely prevented from reaching by the condescension, slander, and outright muzzling by the media and the elites in her own party. It is time she received some help and someone else to draw off the flack and open holes in what is actually a very vulnerable (the vast majority of Americans hate the IRS, Welfare Queens, Lawyers, Career Politicians, and Professional Press) defensive line.