SO FAR she IS the front-runner, and, regardless of who likes that fact or doesn’t like it, it’s her wide popularity that is what makes winning candidates. Her viability will depend on what happens roughly in the next year or so, hinging on TWO interrelated things: how the Tea Party influence helps the Republicans re-define themselves for the better, how much of the Obama agenda they can roll back, how much of the rolled-back agenda can be negated and discredited at its core by far better Republican ideas that will not be crammed down our throats but instead given their “day in court”,(showing indisputably how the way we do things is different from the way THEY DID things) AND , most importantly , who the Democrats can come up with to challenge Sarah. I’ve always felt it would be Hillary, and I still feel that way. It won’t be Obama. Hillary should be fully positioned in a year or so to make the move.
By that time Sarah Palin’s popularity will have extended into constituencies she doesn’t own yet, or would even lay claim to. The numbers will flow to her naturally.