Michael Shear: Palin ‘on the Verge’ of Decision About Presidential Run

She is reportedly "just days away from deciding whether to run for president."
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At the NY Times political blog, The Caucus, Michael Shear writes that Gov. Palin is reportedly 'just days away' from making her decision on whether to get into the 2012 race for the White House:

In a letter to donors late last week, Tim Crawford, the chief of her political action committee, wrote that Ms. Palin is “on the verge of making her decision of whether or not to run for office.”

Mr. Crawford noted that “someone must save our nation from this road to European socialism,” and asked for money as a way of demonstrating support if she throws her hat in the ring. He gave no clue to her decision, though he added that time is “running out.”

In fact, the political clock is ticking away. Ms. Palin now faces serious deadlines in October that, if missed, could keep her name off the presidential primary ballot.

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The brain trust around Ms. Palin is still small. It includes her husband, Todd; Mr. Crawford; Rebecca Mansour, who started a pro-Palin Web site; Michael Glassner, her chief of staff; and maybe a half-dozen other loyal aides.

They are well aware of the deadlines and of the amount of work that must be done quickly if she decides to run. Aides insist that if she has made a decision, they have not yet been informed about it.

If Ms. Palin tells them she is running, aides will move quickly to incorporate a campaign committee, probably in Delaware. They will have to find a headquarters building. (An aide promised it would not be inside the Washington Beltway.) Calls will be placed to 15 or 20 wealthy supporters to begin preparing for a fund-raising blitz.

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Knowing the issues that are most important to Gov. Palin -- cronyism, energy security and the nation's debt crisis -- no one candidate in the GOP's field has seriously addressed all three. Michelle Bachmann has brought up cronyism; Newt Gingrich has talked some about energy; and a few candidates -- more notably Herman Cain and Ron Paul -- have discussed the debt crisis, but each of the candidates has deficiencies or other problems which we are sure would prevent the former vice presidential candidate from being able to give her endorsement.

Paul and Gary Johnson would fail her national security test. Gingrich, Bachmann, Cain and Rick Santorum have no executive experience in government. Rick Perry has cronyism issues, and when Gov. Palin stood up for Arizona governor Jan Brewer on illegal immigration, Rick Perry was nowhere to be found. We believe she would see Jon Huntsman as being too far to the left, and the single payer MassCare system as a disqualifier for Mitt Romney. As for potential candidates not yet int the race, Chris Christie's embrace of the global warming myth and opposition to developing conventional energy resources in his own state would likely be a non-starter for Sarah Palin, and she doubtlessly would find Rudy Giuliani's enabling of abortion and sanctuary cities as factors which would prevent her from granting an endorsement to the former mayor.

As Shear concludes, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee could very well decide that the void in the Republican Party's field of presidential contenders could only be filled by one person. Herself.

- JP