Laughing all the way to the bank

It was a little over two-and-a-half years ago that the name Sarah Palin was basically unknown to most Americans, let alone around the globe. From the time Senator John McCain plucked her out of Alaska to be his running mate, we started to learn a great deal about her. We saw her at the Republican Party convention, at election rallies where she, not McCain, was the main draw, and we saw her in a few interviews with the mainstream media.

We learned about her politics, campaigning style (she brought the heat), her religious beliefs, and her clothing preferences, and we learned all about her family, from the pregnant Bristol - and her boyfriend Levi Johnston -- to the littlest Palin, Trig. By the time the presidential campaign was over, some of us may have known more about her and her family that our own.

After the McCain/Palin ticket went down to defeat, the stand-alone Palin ticket took off.

Republican supporters continued worshipping, the Tea Party and the Religious Right found a landsman (loosely translated from the Yiddish as a like-minded soul) and kvelled (Yiddish for took pride), the mainstream media was mesmerized, the Fox News Channel hired her, all sorts of conservative organizations were tripping all over themselves to get her to speak and give her the gelt, and her first book became an instant best seller.

There was "Sarah Palin's Alaska," and daughter Bristol's appearance on the top-rated television program "Dancing With the Stars." Sarah Palin went viral.

Despite not having displayed maven-like instincts on any specific political issues, Brand Palin was running on chutzpah (her nervy persona) and a fair amount of mazel (luck).

For a time, if a news cycle passed without a snarky tweet, a hollow comment on the Fox News Channel, or a sound blight from a speech to some conservative group or another, people started wondering; 'What's up with Sarah?"

There were gaffes a plenty, especially when she used the term "blood libel" in a video complaining that she was being accused of inciting violence against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by using a crosshairs during the campaign, months before Giffords was gunned down at, a Tucson, Arizona shopping center. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein pointed out that Palin may have felt "aggrieved" by attempts to blame her for the shooting, but she muffed an opportunity "to look very big" by saying "we all sometimes go too far" and pledging to do better.

Rhetorical whack-a-mole

These days, Palin has been executing a rhetorical whack-a-mole. She maintained that President Obama is "inexperienced"; knocked Michelle Obama for advocating breast-feeding; criticized comedian Kathy Griffin for picking on her family; and had a statement issued by her aide and unofficial spokeswoman Rebecca Mansour saying that Palin "doesn't recall being invited on Jon Stewart's show" and that Palin "is certainly not 'afraid' to go on his or any show." Mansour pointed out that "sometimes she chooses to avoid a show, such as David Letterman's, because she doesn't want to give it a ratings or publicity boost. But afraid? No way."

In the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that has devastated parts of Japan and called into question the safety of several of its nuclear reactors, Palin slammed President Obama on her Facebook page.

She accused him of pursuing a "war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production." She called Obama the "$4-per-gallon president," writing: "The evidence of the president's anti-drilling mentality and his culpability in the high gas prices hurting Americans is there for all to see." According to Michael Falcone and Amy Walter of ABC News' The Note, "She repeated her criticism of the Obama administration-backed drilling moratorium following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the proposed elimination of tax incentives for certain types of exploration, and what she calls the president's 'anti-drilling regulatory policies.'"

Palin also said that 2012 "can't come soon enough."

Dismal polling

Her comments come in the wake of a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, that found "Palin's favorability rating among members of her own party has fallen to a new low," Falcone and Walter pointed out. "Not only that but negative views of Palin are much higher than those of other possible Republican presidential candidates."

The poll also found that "among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 37 percent see Palin unfavorably, exceeding former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's unfavorable rating by 11 points, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's by 16 points and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's by 19 points."

Recent headlines about her have emphasized the negative: "Has Sarah Palin peaked? Poll numbers sag, and she's taking GOP friendly fire," read the headline at csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor); "Former George W. Bush aide Ari Fleischer says Sarah Palin's got no chance in 2012" (Politico.com).

The "Will Palin run in 2012?" question that was red-hot amongst GOPers a few months ago now seems to be flaming out.

What hasn't flamed out is Palin's celebrity: Apparently, comedian Kathy Griffin has taken up where Tina Fey left off. According to HollywoodNews.com, Griffin - who has been embroiled in a feud of sorts with Palin - "played a scary regionals judge" on a recent "episode of 'Glee.'" Griffin's "Glee" "character was said to be a 'Sarah Palin-like conservative' and the former Alaska governor is clearly not a fan of Kathy calling her a '50-year-old bully' and a 'has-been.'"

In another Palin-related entertainment note, actress Julianne Moore may have been tapped to play Palin in the upcoming HBO film "Game Change," based on John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book of the same name, which is about John McCain's failed 2008 presidential run. Palin told Fox News: "I think I'll just grit my teeth and bear whatever comes what may with that movie... I am all about job creation and I guess I could provide some of these gals who pretend they're me some job security. I would ask though that - if they're of the mind of spreading the wealth around - that perhaps they want to spring for one of my kid's braces or something as they capitalize on pretending to be me."

Not unexpectedly, the more negative comments that gets tossed her way, the more her supporters leap to her defense. And none of the negativity has appeared to affected her drawing power at conservative events. And while her second book didn't sell nearly as well as the first, it did pretty darned well and there's no question that Palin's bank account continues to grow.

And perhaps her prestige as well: She is scheduled to deliver a closing keynote speech titled, "My Vision of America," at the India Today 2011 conclave on "The Changing Balance of Power" in New Delhi. Other speakers at the high-powered event include Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Egyptian opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and feminist writer Germaine Greer. Interestingly, Palin's TLC series Sarah Palin's Alaska recently premiered in India.

Remember Joe McGinniss, the journalist who got in trouble with the Palin family when he took up residence in a house overlooking the Palin compound while working on a Palin book? That book, titled The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, is due out in September.

At his so-called "last press conference" on November 7, 1962 after losing the California governor's race to Democratic incumbent governor Pat Brown (the father of current governor Jerry Brown), Richard M. Nixon told the more than 100 reporters gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel that "you don't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

We know how that went!

The era of Palin as viable political candidate may or may not be coming to an end. However, that doesn't mean she will fade away. There are more books to be written, new reality series to be pitched, and more highly paid speeches to be given.