Yes, but how does "excitement" change the quality or quantity of the pool of candidates.
Look, I know people are upset about this, and they want to assign blame and damages. I'll concede blame. She made the decision and she has to live with. I'm sure she realizes that. But there are really no damages here.
As far as "milking it," i just think that's your anger talking. I listened to her interview with Mark Levin, and I'm satisfied that she didn't. I think she had some serious security concerns that outweighed everything. Who am I to tell her to put her family second.
I would think that anyone who really respected her, would listen to what she says and take her at her word. That doesn't mean that people aren't entitled to feel the way they do. She's a big girl, she made the decision, and she has to live with it, criticism and all...but I think a lot of it is way over the top, and it says more about the person making it than it does about Sarah Palin.
“Yes, but how does “excitement” change the quality or quantity of the pool of candidates.”
Because the voters were more familiar with Palin than Bachmann, Cain, or Perry. They may not have bothered to listen to them much, hoping that Palin was going to be running. Her daughter said last summer, that her mother definitely knew whether or not she was running. No one would have cared about “Undefeated” or some of her speeches if she wasn’t going to be running.