Sarah Palin’s dithering about whether she will run in 2012 or not has turned her into a mini Harold Camping, according to Erik Erickson at RedState. Palin has kept her supporters on the fence with an ever-moving deadline for when she would jump into the race. Back in August, she stated that her drop-dead date would be the end of September. Now she changed that — to October.

Since August both Joe McGinnis and Levi Johnston’s negative books about Palin have been published, and this week the documentary Sarah Palin: You Betcha will premier in Los Angeles and New York. To cap off September, a novel depicting a mentally ill female vice president is out, written by Nicolle Wallace, one of Palin’s handlers from the ’08 campaign. Wallace said that she was inspired to write the book after working with Palin, and said in a particularly scathing Rachel Maddow appearance said the VP character in the book was “cuckoo for Coco Puffs.”

All of this has Palin acolytes in pain, and defecting. The bloggers over at Conservatives 4 Palin have been reeling, some making excuses, others defecting for a rival site, Palin4 America. Palin’s Gideon’s Fleece bus tour of earlier this year did not seem to give her a sign to run, and now the footage resembles highlights from a retirement reel, rather than the fodder for a crop of Palin 2012 commercials.

Put this together with the doubling down of conservatives like Ann Coulter, who said this about Palin on the O’Reilly factor: She is “The One to a certain segment of right wingers”, and “No conservative on TV will criticize Palin, because they don’t want to deal with the hate mail.”

Has Palin’s fleece gone dry with Fox News and her followers? The time is rapidly approaching for Palin to decide. Will she make a date, or will she, like Harold Camping’s failed end of the world predictions, miss her date with destiny in 2012? Only time will tell, but time for Palin to decide is running out.