Sarah Palin, the Ultimate Political Cock Tease: How She and the Rest of the GOP Might Just Assure Obama a Second Term

            And so ends the inevitable truth that we all knew was coming. On Wednesday Sarah Palin officially announced that she was not running for president in 2012. This comes as no great surprise to anyone who had been watching the race; Palin hadn’t done a single thing toward making a run outside of collecting donations and forming an exploratory committee.

            After what she called “much prayer and serious consideration,” Palin said that her “family comes first.” Many thought she would come around and make the run, but Palin must have known all along she wasn’t going to try. She would have had to give up her cozy multi-million dollar deal with Fox News in order to campaign and come back into a public forum and debate an armada of challengers (instead of just Biden).

            Her announcement came almost immediately after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that he would not be running for president either. The loss of these two would-be challengers – while not ultimately surprising – continues to leave the GOP field weak for contention. As of now, the GOP’s sideline looks a lot stronger than its starting lineup. Pawlenty, Barbour, Huckabee, Daniels and the other other Bush are among those not running. This list also includes every sitting Republican Senator and the self congratulating young architects of the House Republicans. Even Florida Senator Rick Rubio says he wants nothing to do with a GOP ticket.

            Obama is hurting right now, and if the GOP put in even half an effort they’d stand a good chance to unseat him. They’d even have numbers in the House and be close to having a majority in the Senate again. However, Republicans have fielded their thinnest group in years to try to ascend the White House. We are left wondering why no one in the GOP seems to care about this election. Maybe they’d just rather let Obama win so that he can keep shouldering the blame for the problems that they all helped create. Or maybe we’ve reached the point where even politicians really don’t care about who becomes president.