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While other Republicans followed predictable and even plodding paths toward the White House this year, Palin has moved along two parallel tracks, one befitting a candidate, the other designed for a celebrity. It is often hard to tell where one stops and the other begins, and that is by design. A presidential candidate used to need a central headquarters and satellite offices in all the early primary states; now all a contender like Palin needs is a cable modem. Working largely from her lakeside house in Wasilla, Alaska, Palin raised millions of dollars, produced three viral Internet videos and endorsed more than seven dozen Republican candidates (most of whom prevailed).

At the same time, however, she worked more on her profile than on her platform, releasing her second best-selling book in two years and starring in her own cable television series and in the process putting as much as $13 million in the bank. Palin has been particularly adroit at keeping her name front and center on both stages, whether jabbing Washington Republicans for their pork-barrel spending or turning up in Hollywood to watch her daughter Bristol advance to the final round of Dancing with the Stars. (Bristol's ribald safe-sex PSA, meanwhile, became something of a YouTube sensation.)

Palin's maneuvering has Republicans a little stressed out. Barbara Bush, who recently expressed hope that Palin might stay in Alaska, isn't the only GOP elder voicing concern over a potential Palin run for the White House. "The same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private," wrote Joe Scarborough, a former GOP Congressman, in an op-ed. "Enough. It's time for the GOP to man up." Only Obama seems unfazed by Palin's game. On Nov. 24, he was quoted as saying that he doesn't "think about" Palin, but even if that statement is accurate, he is perhaps the only person in politics who can reasonably make the claim.


So what exactly is at stake? Does Palin really want to be President and assume the burdens that go with the job? Or is she just teasing the Grand Old Party while she lays the foundations for a more comfortable life as a public provocateur, doing TV, writing books, making speeches and dabbling in politics as it serves her greater goals? The former scenario is what many in the Republican Party are dreading; the latter one is freezing the likely GOP presidential field until she clarifies her plans. And Palin, naturally, wisely and consistently, is coy about the answer. "I would run because the country is more important than my ease, though I'm not necessarily living a life of ease.

She has a sixth sense for her opponents' weak spots — a useful tool in politics but perhaps an even more valuable one when considering life as a permanent pundit.

The most intriguing thing Palin has done since 2008 is march steadily to the right. Once a moderate Republican who proudly appealed to Alaska's independent voters, she is now much more overtly conservative. Though her powerful videos, meant as they are for mass audiences, usually lack specifics, her speeches and tweets are far more pointed. She has mocked Obama's "vast" nuclear-arms experience acquired as a community organizer and slammed him for apologizing to the world for America's greatness. In a speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in April, she hit Obama for "coddling our enemies and alienating allies" and for offering "tepid sanctions" on North Korea.

If Palin has shrewdly anticipated the Tea Party's rise, the mechanics of her operation are a little pokier. She hasn't made a big fundraising push, holding just two events for her PAC this year, compared with Mitt Romney's nine. Still, her popularity has helped her rake in the cash online and by mail: through her PAC, now 23 months old, Palin has raised $5.4 million.
The bulk of her funds have gone to pay for her travel, staff salaries and fundraising itself.

There is something unmistakably improvised about the way Palin operates. Eleventh-hour decisions mean that her team has had its share of missed flights, misspelled candidates' names, appearances canceled at the last minute, endorsements in races attributed to the wrong state, to say nothing of made-up words like "refudiated."

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