PALIN: I LET THE REST OF YOU WIN

I don't know if Sarah Palin is running for president, and at this point I don't care -- she's lost all but a few diehards, so she can't possibly win the nomination, and even if she could, she doesn't have anything resembling an effective campaign organization, not to mention the fact that polls say she doesn't even have enough mojo anymore to split the teabagger vote enough to help Mitt Romney.

But whatever she's doing, she's already explaining that she won't be president but that isn't her fault:

INDIANOLA, IOWA -- The 2,000 people who came from across the country to see Sarah Palin address a tea party rally here Saturday wanted one thing: To hear her say she's running for president.

They didn’t get it....

In what could be seen subtly contrasting herself against the announced candidates in the Republican field -- especially Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, who are both mounting their campaigns on appeals to the same kinds of voters with whom Palin resonates most -- she slung an attack at the Republican candidates who "raise mammoth amounts of cash."

"We need to ask them, too: What, if anything, do their donors expect in return for their investments?" She noted gleefully, "I don't play that game, either, of hiring expert political advisers just so they’ll say something good about me on TV."

Translation: I'm too virtuous to become the GOP nominee! It's not that I've completely failed to get myself into a position where I could win the nomination -- it's that I won't dirty my hands doing the things I need to do to win! So next summer, when someone else is the nominee, it doesn't mean I've failed -- it means the system failed me!

And thus she'll keep stringing the faithful along, telling them that if we didn't live in a tawdry, fallen world, she really would be president. And they'll believe her.

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UPDATE: Link fixed.