b)There's a big difference in making weekly trips to various venues in the US and moving to Washington, DC full time ro run the RNC. A single flight from Anchorage to NY or DC takes at least 8-10 hours each way, with Seattle the half-way point.
Power in the RNC is NOT centralized as it is in the DNC. The RNC is run like a corporation, with the chair serving as CEO, and the beltway GOP poo-bahs serving as a Board of Directors. Hence, the RNC chair does NOT have the same level of power as his or her counterpart in the DNC, and the collective Board can effectively veto any changes that an incoming chairwoman such as Palin would try to implement. She would find herself locked in a cage again, as she was as governor in Alaska.I grant the difference in the structure, but consider this: It isn't impossible that a sweepout of Michael Steele (I think I noted earlier that there's rumbling to move him out, has been for awhile, I think) would provoke a concurrent sweep out from among the poobahs to whom you refer. Enough, perhaps, to make room enough for Mrs. Palin to be a prospect for the chair and to be an effective one if she were to get it. And I have seen where she has the capability of turning one or two poobahs' heads in a different direction because she is, after all, persuasive enough when she needs to be.
She also has something Michael Steele didn't have when he took the chair (and still doesn't)---Mr. Steele isn't exactly the inspiring type, and he isn't even close to being all that popular. Mrs. Palin is, and is again. She has the gravitas Mr. Steele merely fantasises having. That by itself could prove a big piece of leverage.
I was impressed with the political skill she showed during the 2010 campaign, as I noted earlier, notwithstanding one or two mis- or mal-endorsements. She showed me an enormous organisational skill, she stayed on message and did enough (even if it wasn't always overt, even if it wasn't always heeded) to keep most of the candidates for whom she campaigned or endorsed likewise.
It was a showing I didn't exactly expect, since I thought of her, prior to the '10 campaigns, as a former officeholder and a prospective candidate pretty strictly. Then the campaigns began in earnest. Mrs. Palin's overall, non-officeholding, non-officeseeking political skill, campaigning for other officeseekers, was a refreshing surprise to me.