To her critics, there’s only one acceptable way to view Sarah Palin’s decision to quit as Alaska’s governor: Her rationale, as Eugene Robinson put it, is “not just contrived or implausible but literally nonsensical,” and anyone who even suggests she remains a viable 2012 contender is, in the words of Josh Marshall, “being witlessly contrarian to set themselves apart from the common herd of sane people.”
They seem not to notice that Palin is actually doing what ambitious politicians have done for years—except that she’s being a little more honest about it.
If you accept that Palin would like to run for president in 2012 (and this seems like the correct interpretation, now that the silly Big Scandal theory that Marshall
