Palin 2.0 Hits The Market

Even as her poll ratings sag, Sarah Palin remains the Republican party's hottest commodity.

Alaska's departing governor continues to hog the political spotlight, this time with an op-ed in the Washington Post, slamming President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan.

In the Tuesday piece, titled "The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End," Palin described the administration's proposal as "an enormous threat to our economy" which "would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage."

Palin also used the Post's bully pulpit to take a dig at what she called "many in the national media" who she said "would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges."

When she announced on July 3 plans to resign her office, Palin said she intended to speak out on political issues and to campaign for Republican candidates around the nation. Indeed, a USA Today/Gallup poll released last week found that approximately 7 in 10 Republicans would be likely to vote for Palin if she ran for president. (Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post reported on Monday that Palin's political action committee has so far raised $733,000 - and that Palin's resignation had generated "a flood of donations to the PAC," according to a knowledgeable source.

However, Palin may need to publish a few more op-eds to boost her standing with the broader American electorate. A CBS News poll published late Monday found that just 23 percent of Americans held a favorable view of the former Republican vice presidential nominee. Thirty-seven percent hold an unfavorable view while another 39 percent said they were undecided about Palin.

Last week Republican ad expert, Mike Murphy, published a column in the New York Daily News in which he called Palin a "political train wreck," "an awful choice" for vice president, and her resignation an "astonishing self-immolation." Murphy said, "She's a stone-cold loser in a general election."

If so, that message hasn't got through to Palin headquarters. Her Washington Post column was the kind of hard-hitting polemic big think piece that candidates for higher office are wont to publish. To wit:
"We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter."