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Palin’s strategic genius has been leveraging speculation about a 2012 presidential run to create an unassailable political celebrity There’s always been a strong undercurrent of jealousy and fear in the venomous attacks on former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, not only from liberals and the left, but increasingly from Republicans. Republicans like Karl Rove, the former top George W Bush adviser, who’s tried every which way to force Palin out of contention for the GOP nomination, while promoting his own favoured “centre-right” candidates, most notably Bush’s younger brother, Jeb. And yet, in the face of open hostility from the men who largely built the current GOP, there the shameless diva sits jealously guarding third place in the latest Washington Post/ABC and CNN opinion polls . Without even announcing that she will run – and despite many predictions that she has no intention of so doing – Palin’s not only within striking distance of Mitt Romney (for months, the GOP’s putative “front-runner”), Palin is also far ahead of Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. Bachmann became a Tea party darling in her own right and has tried desperately hard to inherit Palin’s mantle. But, judging from her sagging poll numbers and her listless performance in last week’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library in California, she is already falling short of that ambition. Monday’s GOP debate in Tampa, Florida (site of next year’s GOP nominating convention, in fact) won’t include Palin, of course – because she is not a formally declared candidate and is keeping everyone guessing, to the chagrin of many Republicans anxious to declare their party’s contest a “two man race”. But don’t think the “Thrilla from Wasilla”, who recently wowed audiences with rousing campaign-style speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire , won’t be there in spirit. The event’s chief host, the Tea Party Express, is about as pro-Palin as the Tea Party gets, and indeed, it is far more so than its two friendly rivals, the Tea Party Patriots, an arm of which just launched a broadside against Palin for her media antics , and FreedomWorks USA, a group founded by former House majority leader Dick Armey, which is so staunchly libertarian and, at times, pro-big business, that the other two Tea Party groups have all but denounced it as a “fraud”. The founder of the Tea Party Express, Sal Russo , started his career as a young operative for Ronald Reagan, and he’s gone on to support numerous Republican campaigns, including, of course, Palin’s in 2008, when she ran with John McCain as his VP candidate. Russo was one of the first to sense the enormous political potential of the Tea Party concept, and alone among the three national groups, he’s proven highly adept at organising – and personally profiting from – its national advertising campaigns and nationwide bus tours. Palin has leveraged her access to these to emerge as one of the Tea Party’s most powerful and recognisable advocates. But significantly, unlike Bachmann, Palin has never really billed herself as a Tea Party leader . She’s built strong ties to key figures in the GOP establishment like McCain and, of course, Rick Perry, whom she helped get elected last November. She has even opposed local Tea Party candidates when it suited her, including a key figure in New Hampshire, which could cost Palin in the Granite State, should she still decide to run. But her special gift from the start has been her ability to bridge the Tea Party and the establishment – a role that Perry now seems anxious to assume, and which Palin’s continued presence on the scene clearly jeopardises. It’s the unspoken, but simmering, Perry-Palin rivalry that accounts for the content and tone of remarkable – but little-noticed – 40-minute speech in Iowa two weeks ago. In a clear swipe at Perry, she lambasted the “permanent political class” and the corrupt “crony capitalists” who like to co-opt grassroots movements like the Tea Party, she claimed, promising them smaller government and lower taxes, but running up huge deficits and expanding the reach of government into their daily lives. And she reminded her adoring fans – many of them cheering, as always, “Run, Sarah, Run” – that she’d taken on the “good ol’ boys” of the GOP when she ran for and served as Alaska governor, and would gladly do so again, if needed. Palin, it seems, is recalculating her political options and recalibrating her message. She clearly wants to be taken seriously as a party spokesperson; and with funds from her still-thriving SarahPAC, she functions as a playmaker. Running for president still seems one possible option, but keeping her profile in the GOP race high enough to serve as an influential power-broker among the candidates is another. She seemed to relish the fact that Romney appeared in New Hampshire the same day she did, but to much smaller crowds. If only to further tweak Perry, she even hinted that she’d support Romney if he ended up the nominee. But don’t think that Palin is necessarily limiting her political horizons to the 2012 residential race. Judging from her actions and remarks over the past several months , she is also seriously considering moving in the direction of a third-party bid, perhaps on a separate Tea Party ticket, following in the footsteps of an independent candidate like H Ross Perot, who built an enormous following and name for himself by launching the Reform America movement in the early 1990s. He won a remarkable 20% of the popular vote in 1992 – the year that Democrat Bill Clinton was elected president with just 43%, a historic low. Another option? She might run for the Arizona Senate seat soon to become open thanks to the impending retirement of Republican Jon Kyl. Palin this year bought property and moved her residence part-time to Scottsdale, a suburb north of Phoenix, ostensibly to be close to the Palin daughter attending school there. But Palin’s constantly using her progeny as props and pretexts of various kinds, so the idea that she’s actually laying the groundwork for a Senate bid , where she would be able to count on strong support from her former running mate McCain, can’t be ruled out. The fact that Palin’s plan B option would likely be another person’s lifetime dream job would indicate the unbridled magnitude of Palin’s vision for herself on the national stage. Can you imagine any other politician who could appear before a Christian audience, and after citing recent opinion polls, jokingly note that polls [or "poles"], in her view, “should be left to strippers and skiers”? And it would take some front for Palin to make a bid for a Senate seat in Arizona that has been coveted by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic congresswoman who was shot in Tucson shortly after the Palin campaign had placed a sniper’s cross-hairs over Giffords’s name on a map posted on its website. But does anyone doubt she lacks the will? Palin is like a pop celebrity who makes up her own rules, and then changes them on a whim. There appears nothing anyone anywhere can do to stop her. One thing we can be sure of: Palin’s not about to fade away. Sarah Palin Republicans Tea Party movement US politics US elections 2012 Karl Rove Rick Perry Michele Bachmann United States Mitt Romney Stewart J Lawrence guardian.co.uk