The Dish is more than a little down. To have had an election between two sane adults over the direction of the country would have been … well I once said that about a McCain-Obama contest, and look how that turned out. And perhaps for these reasons – and because of his interrupted marriage and shoe-boxes of pot in his youth – Daniels realized he could never appease or win over the foam-speckled brigades of the far right, which now seem to control the party. Jonathan Martin's take:
Without Daniels, … it’s the mainstream Republicans not named Mitt Romney who stand to benefit.
Huntsman and Pawlenty become the non-Romneys. Palin and/or Bachmann become the post-Huckabees. Meanwhile, Palin has reiterated she has "fire in her belly" and is "seriously considering" a run. And now this:
Confirmation of a Palin house purchase in Scottsdale likely would rekindle chatter about whether Palin might run a political campaign out of Arizona, the home state of U.S. Sen. John McCain, who plucked her from relative political obscurity in 2008 to be his vice-presidential running mate.
She may have concluded she simply couldn't run for president based in Wasilla. So she has picked the state with the most polarized population between the older, whiter America and the newer, browner one. Guess which side she's on.
(Photo: Shawn Thew/Getty.)
The Dish 