Evidence currently points to Sarah Palin running for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012. Since leaving office as Governor of Alaska she has embarked on a textbook public relations strategy to make the 2008 race a faint memory in the minds of the electorate.

After concluding her successful book tour Palin has already indicated that she will be supporting GOP candidates throughout the US in the 2010 Congressional midterm elections. As of now it is generally believed that the GOP will pick up seats in both the House and Senate, particularly if the country is still in the midst of a deep recession. If Palin chooses her races wisely, she could spin her support as proof of her increasing popularity with the national electorate.

Her problem is that her story has already been told on a national platform, so she needs to create a significant history on that same platform between now and the next election. This is something that is more necessary for Palin that it would be for Mitt Romney, Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee, who all failed in their bids for the nomination but failed with their dignity left in tact.

Palin is indeed rogue in the sense that she will be attempting to win national office while being widely condemned and criticized across the spectrum in the world of politics. She attempts to spin this as a positive, as though her ideas are too rogue for the world of politics. However, the reason she is mocked is because she is tragically incompetent and embarrassing for those informed on the issues.

Now whether the Republican establishment seeks to again attempt to follow her into the White House remains to be seen. If they do it will be because she will make the perfect pitch woman for their foreign policy/big business agenda, not because she has revolutionary ideas.

I can also see how she will further use her folksy “charm” to contrast herself with President Obama. As if to say, “We tried the President of the Harvard Law review with a sharp intellect who is as smooth and collected as they come, and guess what? It did not work, we are worse off than we were 4 years ago.” And Palin’s base will flock to rallies to hear that line.

However if her base would stop to ask for one second how Palin and Obama are alike they would see that neither campaigned on firmly held believes while relying heavily on the phenomenon that is their public persona.

Palin’s book focuses largely on dismissing and justifying the public embarrassment that was her performance in the 2008 election. Supporters should look for firmly held beliefs on issues such as foreign policy, which would be the continued policies of the Bush Administration.

If Palin herself pays close attention over the next three years she will see that President Obama was the fall guy for the continuing of the same establishment agenda of foreign intervention and the consolidation of the nation’s wealth to Washington’s buddies on Wall Street.

In a recent poll Mitt Romney saw his favorable numbers among the GOP base drop from 60% back in April to a lackluster 48% currently. Palin enjoys a 75% approval in the same poll. When you consider this turn on Romney with Huckabee recently indicating in an interview with Fox News that he was leaning away from running in 2012, it becomes clear why Palin is stepping up her game. While candidates such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal could receive moderate support in the primaries, they are both essentially establishment candidates that would fare about as well as Rudy Giuliani did in the 2008 GOP primary. They simply will fail to ignite the base. The only other national GOP candidate that could enter the race with similar momentum and equally passionate supporters to Palin could be Congressman Ron Paul from Texas.

I should point out that Mitt Romney does have a rock solid base of support at the core of the GOP establishment and I would chalk up his recent decline in the polls to a lack of exposure. Should he choose to run in 2012, I see no reason that he would not be in the thick of the race deep into the primaries.

A little more than a year from now the official announcements of candidacies will begin to trickle in from the GOP Presidential hopefuls, but until then the race is to jockey for position of initial front runner.