THEY HELD HER DOWN AND FORCED HER TO BE A NASTY, McCARTHYITE KNOW-NOTHING

President Obama wants to let Evil Terrorist Superpredators into America to stand trial, but the #1 story in America is Sarah Palin? OK, whatever. I'll ignore the boring and unrevealing excerpt Matt Drudge has posted (Palin thinks the McCain campaign shafted her by setting up that Katie Couric interview -- gosh, who knew?) and go straight to the musings of Palin's wannabe Boswell (or Benjamin Braddock), Matthew Continetti, who has a Wall Street Journal op-ed on her chances for 2012:

... Ms. Palin has two problems. The first is that she's become one of the most polarizing figures in the country. The second is that voters continue to worry about her qualifications for the presidency....

Lucky for her, both problems are solvable.... Blockbuster interviews and book tours will humanize her.

More important than these public appearances is Ms. Palin's message. She needs to adopt a market-friendly populist agenda to strengthen her policy credentials and make her seem less partisan to independent voters. A bipartisan, center-right approach should come easily to her. That's how she won her race for governor in 2006.

Ms. Palin's unpopularity -- the result of horrendous media coverage and her role as the McCain campaign's pitbull -- is a major political obstacle....

Oh, right -- being a pitbull was her "role." It was just a grim, onerous task assigned to her by those horrible McCain people. Her current reputation has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she took to it like a duck to water, clearly savoring every attack, and, in fact, launching attacks she was specifically asked not to launch.

And that history, plus her post-'08 role as the top catapulter of "death panels" propaganda, sure suggests that she's primed to adopt a "bipartisan, center-right approach" that will make her "seem less partisan to independent voters," doesn't it, Matthew?

Seriously, Matthew -- how on earth could Palin take a "bipartisan, center-right approach" and possibly survive the primaries in a Beck-addled party, even assuming she wanted to? Hell, Tim freaking Pawlenty is going teabag -- is Palin going to run to his left?

I'm not even going to dwell on the qualifications question -- she's not qualified, she's not going to "get up to speed" on the issues and become qualified, and everyone who isn't seeing Palin starbursts knows that. But as for the rest, Matthew? You're deluding yourself even more if you think she's going to suddenly turn nice and post-partisan. Not going to happen.