The reaction amongst the punditry has been your basic collective WTF? Josh Marshall at TPM has been following it and notices how the right wing has been caught flat-footed and gasping. Hilzoy sums it up perfectly:
I have no more idea than anyone else, but hey: what's the point of blogging if not to amass a record of your unfounded speculations so that you can go back and see how wrong you were? My unfounded speculation: I do not believe for a moment that this is about taking time off to prepare for 2012. Nothing I know about Sarah Palin leads me to believe that she would give up power voluntarily, let alone for something that is such a long shot, and in such a transparently self-destructive way.Stay tuned.
I think that there's something we don't know about: either a serious health problem or a serious scandal. In either case, it would, I think, have to be a really big deal to make her react in this way. She has shown herself to be more than capable of brushing off smaller scandals, national embarrassment, and a whole host of other things. She did not step down from the governorship when she gave birth to a child with special needs, or when she was asked to be McCain's running-mate. She did not decline McCain's offer because of the potential embarrassment, either to her or her family, of her daughter being unmarried and pregnant. She is no shrinking violet.
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I await further news with fascination. I'm also taking bets on who the next imploding Republican Presidential hopeful will be.
