Seriously, you need to consider Occam’s razor here. It is possible it looked like she was leaning toward running, um, because she was leaning toward running. That does solve the “mystery” in tidy fashion.
Only it doesn’t conform to the left’s “Evil Palin” meme, so it became necessary to complicate the theory by proposing deliberate deception, even though there was zero evidence to that effect, and even though it required otherwise decent FReepers to swallow, feathers and all, an unjust slander against her character.
So I sincerely hope that all proponents here of that defamatory lie were paid political hacks sent here to be trolls and orcs among us. I could not bear to think that genuine conservatives would be so susceptible to the mind games of the left, for that would give me true cause to doubt for our future.