Some are calling her the future of the Republican Party.  As much as I hope that is true (because it will only mean that the Republican Party will continue its slide into oblivion), I have to agree with Kevin Drum:

Sarah Palin will disappear into a well-deserved obscurity after the election is over. She is not a "comer." She is not the future of the Republican Party. She will not run for president in 2012. In fact, she won't maintain any kind of serious national political standing at all. At best, she'll spend the next few years being a celebrity starter at NASCAR races and speaking at Republican prayer breakfasts. At worst, she'll be an occasional butt of late night comics.

Palin is lazy, ill-informed, contemptuous of policy, and way too convinced that everybody in the country is dazzled by her folksy energy and thousand-watt smile. Yes, the diehard GOP base is rapturously in love with Palin and her media mockin' ways, but that's more a reflection on the base's future, not hers. Palin is a three-day wonder who's already a month past her sell-by date, and on November 5th she'll disappear to Wasilla for good.

That is undoubtedly true.  Palin was an ill-advised pick, selected for a single reason — to woo dissatisfied Clinton voters.  But that was sooooo two months ago, and the world has, quite literally, changed since then, as has the attitudes of the electorate.  Her shining moment was her convention speech where we met her, and she read off the teleprmopter.  From there, it's been downhill, as people have realized that this is a serious world with serious problems requiring serious people with serious solutions.  Folksy hockey mom schtick doesn't cut it.

But people who are already predicting that Palin will be the President in 2012 better stop and consider that before she gets there, she's going to have to run against other Republicans, some of them with conservative, and nearly all of them (even four years from now) more serious about the issues, more seasoned, and more knowledgeable.  And what will Palin do in the meantime, aside from governing the rather inconsequential state of Alaska?  How will she keep herself in the news?  Come to think of it, how will she FOLLOW the news, given her tendency to not read it?

Palin is a future answer to a future trivia question.  She's not even going to be as well-known as Quayle (who at least WAS Vice President for a while).  She's going to be more like, oh, Thomas Eagleton (oh, google it, for crying out loud!).