To explain, Professor Althouse

You ask, why didn't Sarah Palin "have a say" in her media strategy? The answer is simple and obvious: It wasn't her campaign and it wasn't her staff.

John McCain and his campaign team called all the shots. When Palin balked at their bad advice, she was accused of "going rogue" and badmouthed by anonymous leakers who were, in many cases, the same staffers responsible for the botched strategy. When Palin complained about being unfairly disparaged in the media, she was then accused of "whining." She was cornered, trapped in a can't-win situation.

What happened to Palin was quite similar to what happened to Barry Goldwater in 1964: Democratic attacks on Goldwater were effective mainly because they were echoed by Goldwater's Republican enemies: "Hey, look, even Republicans say Barry's a dangerous warmongering kook!"

We are still three years away from the 2012 presidential election, and I am disappointed by Professor Althouse's effort to portray Palin as not merely unready for the presidency now, but so irremediably inferior as to be permanently disqualified for high office.

Obviously, statesmanship requires traits more weighty than the sort of personal charisma that generates intense grassroots enthusiasm. Otherwise Barack Obama wouldn't be so far along the path to becoming a 21st-century Jimmy Carter. Yet what other 2012 GOP presidential hopeful has a fraction of the grassroots enthusiasm that Palin would bring to the campaign?

The Republican "Anybody But Palin" Coalition seems willing to discard that grassroots enthusiasm, without which Obama's re-election is a near certainty. (If Mitt Romney couldn't even beat that notorious loser John McCain . . .)

Any Republican who disaparages Palin without suggesting a feasible GOP alternative can therefore be said to be objectively pro-Obama.

Ace of Spades and Conservative for Palin have more comment.