Freedom Line Blog

There’s reason to be cautiously optimistic about a conservative ascendency on Capitol Hill this year.

Unless something unexpected happens, the House of Representatives looks safe to remain in Republican hands after the 2014 midterm elections.

The real question is whether the GOP can wrest control of the U.S. Senate. The party needs to pick up six seats – and defend all those it holds – to unite with the House against President Barack Obama’s liberal agenda.

How likely is it that Republicans can pull off the takeover?

“To win six or more Democratic seats, Republicans start with the best possible candidates in West Virginia (Rep. Sherry Moore Capito), South Dakota (former Gov. Mike Rounds), and Montana (Rep. Steve Daines),” writes Fred Barnes. “These open Democratic seats are regarded as near-certain GOP takeovers, but they wouldn’t be if Republicans were stuck with second-tier candidates or worse.”

In political jargon, first-tier candidates are people who can interact with the media well, raise money, avoid unnecessary errors and gaffes and generally present a likeable personality to voters.

In order to win control of the Senate, Republicans also need to compete in slightly more difficult races.

“Then there are the four red states with Democratic incumbents–Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Alaska,” says Barnes. “Once again, Republicans are blessed with able, attractive candidates. As a result, all five races are tossups or lean Republican.”

Controlling both legislative chambers would give Republicans the ability to show Americans a sharper contrast with Obama’s policies. For the first time since the president took office, the GOP – and in particular the conservative intellectual leadership that drives the party’s policy agenda – would be in a position to pass alternative solutions for job growth, health care, etc. Having two years to work out the details would be an excellent test drive for ideas ahead of the 2016 presidential contest when contenders could adopt the most popular proposals.

Come Election Night, we’ll see whether that process of refinement begins or is once again put on hold.

The Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats and liberals generally may claim that the IRS scandal is essentially resolved, that “there’s no there there.”  The American people disagree, and in growing numbers.

According to a Rasmussen survey released today, some 70% now believe that the unconstitutional and criminal targeting originated in Washington, not some insular Cincinnati cubicle:

While the controversy over the National Security Agency surveillance program has dominated the news recently, concern about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations remains high and is inching up.  Despite the large number of controversies engulfing official Washington, the number of people following the IRS scandal has actually increased in recent weeks.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 82% of voters nationwide are now following the IRS targeting story, including 44% who are following the story ‘Very Closely.’  The overall number of voters who are following is up from 74% a month ago.”

It seemed as though the cascade of Obama Administration scandals might paradoxically mitigate the gravity of any one of them individually.  But from this poll and Obama’s plummeting approval numbers, it appears that a healthier sense of sobriety prevails, at least for now.

If U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) ever need a Democratic endorsement of their conservative bona fides, they couldn’t do better than Vice President Joe Biden’s comment the other day at a Massachusetts fundraiser.

Speaking off-the-cuff, Biden told the audience that “the last thing in the world we need now is someone who will go down to the United States Senate and support Ted Cruz, support the new senator from Kentucky,” meaning Rand Paul.

Apparently, the Senators were the two most cited reasons given when Biden pressed Republicans in the chamber to support his and President Barack Obama’s push for stricter gun control laws.

Biden was surprised. “I actually said, ‘Are you kidding?’ These are two freshmen.”

Better yet, call them ‘reformers with results.’

One of the disappointments for many conservatives is to watch a Republican politician talk a good game, but then get co-opted into shirking principles in deference to the process and the allure of power in Washington, D.C.

If Cruz and Paul have been able to stiffen the spines of their Republican colleagues, then it sounds like the GOP caucus is getting more conservative as a result of their presence.

That’s quite a feat for two freshmen.

Just ask Joe Biden.

H/T: Washington Examiner

So the IRS singled out conservative citizens and organizations for persecution, while giving liberal counterparts a “pass,” in the words of USA Today.

As we note this week in our commentary “The IRS, Campaign Finance and Freedom of Association,” the scandal proves the inherent danger of federal micromanagement of American citizens’ private political activity.  As the Supreme Court observed in NAACP v. Alabama (1958), revelation of an organization’s members or supporters exposes them to reprisal, harassment and threat.  We now have a perfect illustration.

According to many liberals, however, the problem isn’t too little citizen privacy but too much.  Already during today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the IRS practices, liberals such as Richard Neal (D – Massachusetts) and Charlie Rangel (D – New York) have asserted that Citizens United is the real problem.  Apparently, forcing citizens to disclose even more of their First Amendment activity to government will transform abusive IRS bureaucrats from perpetrators into saints.

Their agenda is wholly irrational, but all too predictable.   We must fully investigate and expose the IRS abuse, but we must also ensure that the longer-term takeaway is more individual freedom for American citizens, not less.

Stuart Rothenberg perfectly articulates the difficult post-election position of fiscal conservatives:

Republicans may well be correct that the nation’s biggest problem is that “the government spends too much, not that it taxes too little,” but at some point political realities rather than ideological beliefs or past party dogma ought to guide both party leaders and members of its rank and file.

The Roll Call columnist also shows just how much Beltway logic drives his analysis.  If Republicans are right that “the government spends too much, not that it taxes too little,” then Republicans are justified in pushing for reduced spending and resisting tax increases.  And, if Republicans are right, then President Barack Obama and his fellow liberals are wrong to demand the opposite.

That’s not ideology, just math and common sense.  Political calculations may end up trumping both eventually, but that doesn’t mean that fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party are wrong as a matter of logic from defending their position.

Randy Barnett, writing for the American Spectator, captures the zeitgeist of the Tea Party movement in a rousing essay about the need going forward for a different kind of mindset when judging conservative judicial nominees:

Now we will have an election to decide the ultimate fate of Obamacare. But this election should also be about who will be selected to serve on the Supreme Court. Should Republican presidents continue to nominate judicial conservatives who are enthralled with the New Dealers’ mantra of judicial restraint? Or should they nominate constitutional conservatives who believe that it is not “activism” for judges to enforce the whole Constitution? All future nominees should be vetted not only for their views on the meaning of the Constitution, but for their willingness to enforce that meaning.

With Barnett’s distinction in mind, it’s no wonder that Tea Party-inspired Senators like Marco Rubio (FL), Mike Lee (UT), Rand Paul (KY), Jim DeMint (SC) – and soon-to-be Senator Ted Cruz (TX) – all identify themselves as constitutional conservatives.  Restraint in judging liberalism’s faulty governing assumptions hasn’t gotten conservatives many substantive victories.  We need smart, bold nominees eager and able to make the case for the kind of limited government our Founders envisioned; both in the political branches and on the bench.

Politico on why the Obama campaign is using former President Bill Clinton so often:

As the campaign acknowledges, Clinton brings credibility to the connection between an Obama presidency and a strong economy, reinforcing the idea that there’s a straight line between Obama’s proposals and Clinton’s legacy of budget surpluses and middle class prosperity.

It’s only a credible connection if you don’t consider the wildly differing contexts.

As Tim pointed out earlier this month, “the so-called “Clinton surpluses” didn’t arrive until 1998, four years after Newt Gingrich and the Republicans captured Congress for the first time in four decades, and six years after Clinton was elected.  Given the fact that Congress controls the budget under our Constitution, it is therefore disingenuous for Clinton and his apologists to claim sole credit.”

Thus, if in 2012 the Obama camp really wants to make the case that a national economic recovery is just around the corner, it should have prayed for a complete conservative takeover of Congress in 2010.  Had he been faced with an entire branch of government – not just the House – passing real budgets, chances are the Obama White House would have had a Clintonesque opportunity to make a deal.

Instead, Obama has had no incentive to move to the middle for the sake of compromise because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been willing to abdicate his chamber’s constitutional responsibility to pass a new budget for the last three years of Obama’s term of office.  And so the President dithers while the economy sputters.

Call it the Clinton Conundrum.  Both Clinton and Obama are doctrinaire liberals whose policy impulses created pushes to nationalize health care.  Both prefer to raise taxes and spend money.  But Clinton, unlike Obama, was saved from oblivion when Republicans took over both houses of Congress in 1994 and (implicitly and unintentionally) made him an offer he didn’t refuse: either adopt our reform agenda or face defeat in reelection.  Clinton accepted and has benefited ever since.  Obama’s choice was between Senate Democrat dithering and House Republican reform.  He sided with his party and hasn’t governed since.

If Barack Obama wants Bill Clinton’s success, he’ll have to adopt Bill Clinton’s policies.  In large part, that means adopting conservative budget reforms so that he can claim credit for a rebounding economy.

They aren’t lotto numbers; they are the number of times Paul Ryan’s name and budget ideas have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard & National Review, and on Fox News, respectively, since the presidential election of 2008.

According to Politico, the unequaled access to conservative opinion leaders came as a direct result of Ryan’s deliberate strategy to cultivate conservative pundits and think tank-types so that they in turn would promote Ryan’s ideas to the American public, and ultimately, back onto Ryan’s colleagues in Congress.

To say the strategy worked is an understatement.  To read how Ryan did it would be time well spent.

William Kristol sums up the grassroots enthusiasm over the Paul Ryan pick:

Until last week, the Romney campaign was a few hundred operatives working hard in Boston trying to win a presidential election. Now Romney-Ryan is a groundswell of citizens spontaneously writing, volunteering, and proselytizing on behalf of a cause. The first was going to be a grueling uphill climb. The second could be more like running downhill with the wind at your back. Even in the second instance, of course, the candidate still has to jump the hurdles and avoid the obstacles. But it’s a lot easier to prevail when you stand for a cause citizens are eager to join than when you’re engaged in a campaign voters may diffidently support.

And it’s not just politically involved citizens who are energized by Ryan’s elevation to be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.

As Fred Barnes notes, the 87 House Republicans who won office in 2010 have helped heighten Ryan’s profile by supporting his budget reforms.  At least 70 of these are considered likely to be reelected this year, thus solidifying their importance in the caucus.  By putting their party on record as supporting Ryan’s vision, these House GOPers make Romney’s embrace of Ryan a clear legitimization of conservative, market-based reform.

Ryan is the linchpin.  Without him providing the bridge between the reform-minded conservatives in the House and the Romney campaign, it’s very likely that a Romney Administration would be reluctant to move on a policy package the candidate did not run on.  Now, Romney owns it.

Let the proselytizing continue.

Will someone please tell the Wall Street Journal editorial page that Mitt Romney is not Rick Santorum?

Over the past week there’s been a raft of handwringing at the conservative publication over Romney’s inability to make “the moral case” for all kinds of economic activity, such as private equity and capitalism’s risk and reward system.  Yet since Romney hasn’t risen to the challenge of defending the free market, surrogates have stepped forward in droves.  Two recent examples include a guest column that ran yesterday headlined “Newt’s Bain Opportunism is Mitt’s Opportunity,” calling on Romney to “make a moral case for free market capitalism.”  One of today’s editorials, “Mitt Romney’s 15%,” thinks the candidate’s disclosure of his tax rate gives him “the opportunity to make the moral and practical case for lower rates and fewer loopholes.”

The Journal and other economics-only conservatives are demanding too much from Romney.  He’s not a moralist.  As this revealing bio-piece makes clear, those who know him consider Romney a relativist.  Members of his church came to a similar conclusion when he challenged Ted Kennedy in 1994.  Remember, the defining characteristic of a relativist is that he doesn’t believe in absolutes.  For example, the idea that government should never force its citizens to purchase a product against their will…

Simply put, the reason Romney won’t make the moral case for capitalism is because he can’t make it.  It’s just not the way he approaches decisions in business or politics.  Like other New England Republicans, he sounds like a fiscal conservative, but he’s always willing to increase spending, and pass more regulations.  (See RomneyCare, the Salt Lake City Olympic Games bailout, etc.)  His history shows that he opts for what works instead of what’s right.

If the Wall Street Journal and its guest columnists are chagrined that Romney is unable or unwilling to defend beliefs they hold dear, then maybe it’s time they lower the temperature on the rest of the conservative movement who have been expressing the same disappointment with Romney since 2008.

Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard explains why the current 1970’s era primary system almost always impedes the Party of Reagan from nominating a Reaganite for president.

So, here’s the question of the day: why can’t the party of Reagan ever seem to nominate a Reaganite?

My answer: because conservative Republicans are not actually in control of their own party. Though they are its animating force – they give it policy ideas to implement, they turn out regularly to support the party in good times and bad, they advocate the party and its ideology to their friends, neighbors, and relatives – they are not in charge, and have not been since the 1970s (arguably the 1920s, but that’s another story altogether).

Later on, Cost describes how GOP moderates maneuver around the conservative base to secure presidential nominations.

Self-identified conservatives tend to be a majority of most primary electorates, so one would think that, even with the limits of primaries, you’d still get a quality conservative nominee. But that isn’t necessarily the case in a three-way race. That’s the final, huge problem with the primaries. They do not build consensus, which ultimately would require the assent of the conservative side of the GOP. Instead, they create a game similar to the show Survivor – “outwit, outplay, outlast.”

If you are a moderate Republican – e.g. Bob Dole or John McCain – you don’t need to win a majority of the conservative vote. You just need to do well enough among moderate Republicans so that you win more votes than your conservative opponents. Then, you simply wait for the media and the party establishment to pressure your conservative challengers into dropping out.

See if this sounds familiar:

The rules of the nomination game favor candidates who have the insider connections, can garner positive coverage from the media, can appeal to non-ideological and poorly informed voters, and who can win perhaps just a third of the vote in the early rounds. Such candidates are rarely the conservatives. Put another way: conservatives consistently lose because they are not actually in charge of their own party.

This is why, moving forward, conservatives need to spend serious time and effort thinking about how to fix this screwed up process. Yes, it is important to consider the big policy issues – tax reform, health care, industrial policy – but without good rules to produce good nominees who can implement those policies, then it is all for naught.

Food for thought.  You can read the entire article here.

Ever heard of the Colorado Model?  The brainchild of four rich liberals, it helped turn a reliably Republican state into a lock-down Democratic state in less than a decade.  RedState excerpts the keys to its success:

Eric O’Keefe, chairman of the conservative Sam Adams Alliance in Chicago, says there are seven “capacities” that are required to drive a successful political strategy and keep it on offense: [1] the capacity to generate intellectual ammunition, [2] to pursue investigations, [3] to mobilize for elections, [4] to fight media bias, [5] to pursue strategic litigation, [6] to train new leaders, and [7] to sustain a presence in the new media. Colorado liberals have now created institutions that possess all seven capacities. By working together, they generate political noise and attract press coverage. Explains Caldara, “Build an echo chamber and the media laps it up.”

Throw in some Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizing and the wealth of liberal elites, and you’ve got a strategy being exported to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, among others.

The good news is that conservatives and Tea Partiers can use these principles to swing the balance of power the other way.  The time is now.

Huzzah to the 241 members of the House of Representatives who, in a thinly bipartisan vote today (4 Democrats voted in favor), passed H.R. 10, better known as the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act.  As the acronym indicates, the bill wants to limit President Barack Obama’s ability to impose job-killing regulations on the economy.

How does the REINS Act purport to do its job?  If passed by the Senate and signed by the President then every new federal agency regulation inflicting at least $100 million in economic costs would be subject to an up-or-down vote by both houses of Congress.  ($100 million is the threshold for “major” regulations these days.)  When those bills fails – which they almost certainly will unless they are inextricably intertwined with a national security issue – the bureaucrats who dream up these obstacles to economic growth will have to go back to the drawing board and divine a less expensive way to grow the federal government.

Characteristically, the Democrats running the Senate and the one occupying the White House have promised to do nothing to help pass this bill.  (The President even threatened to veto it should enough Senate Dems have the temerity to save their states’ small business owners from the paperwork onslaught thanks to 219 new regulations poised to add thousands of dollars per worker in compliance costs.)

Today, fiscal conservatives can cheer passage of a real “job creation” bill thanks to the conservative plurality in the House of Representatives.  Next year, it will critically important to elect more of these to the Senate – and hopefully the presidency – so that America can get back to work.

It’s an old trope that Democrats are the Santa party while Republicans play Scrooge.  But if the experience of this group of veteran Santa Claus impersonators is any guide, it looks like Old Saint Nick is learning the value of managing (economic) expectations.

Fred Honerkamp, a Santa graduate who also lectures at the school, said that he had come up with his own story of an errant elf to in the North Pole explain why children can’t have everything.

He said: ‘It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors on what the country has been through.

‘In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything.’

The school has also been advising its pupils on how to deal with such questions as: ‘Can you bring my daddy a job?’

Santa student Tom Ruperd told the New York Times that he tends to guide children towards more realistic gifts and tells them that ‘Santa’s been cutting back too’.

Faced with an impossible question, such as finding a job for a parent, his reply is: ‘Santa specializes in toys, but we can always pray on the other’.

Pray, and work hard to elect government officials who know that the truth told with respect for another’s dignity is a much better gift than empty promises.

H/T: Daily Mail

Washington Post columnist and failed CNN host Kathleen Parker caused a stir this weekend with a piece claiming that the alleged ‘know-nothingness’ of Sarah Palin is infecting Republican primary voters.  The evidence, as Byron York of the Washington Examiner points out, points the opposite way.

So far, there have been three Republican candidates who rose and fell quickly in the polls: Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Cain.  Each rose because voters liked some combination of his or her message, experience, and personal appeal.  But each fell mostly for one reason: Republican voters became concerned about whether they knew enough to be president.

Because the GOP base is conservative, and because the candidates each presented a strong conservative message, it’s hardly a surprise that each received a friendly response early in the game.  But once each candidate’s performance in debates or on the stump raised questions about whether he or she had a base of knowledge broad and deep enough to serve as president, Republican supporters began to peel away.  Bachmann now ranks sixth in the RealClearPolitics poll standings, while Perry is fourth.

The candidate who has consistently stayed near the top of Republican polls is Mitt Romney.  There are no questions about whether he knows enough to be president.   The candidate who is rising at the moment, as Parker points out, is Newt Gingrich, about whom the same is true.  And the candidate who has stayed around the middle tier of the race is Ron Paul, who, for whatever problems exist in some of his policy positions, has not faced questions about his knowledge of the issues.  At the bottom tier of the race, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman have also not faced such questions.

Somehow Parker styles all of this — informed candidates rising, uninformed candidates falling — as a “tide of know-nothingness” engulfing the Republican party.  If that were really the case, wouldn’t it be the other way around?

As J. Robert Smith of the American Thinker reasons, Parker’s position on Palin and the GOP is less about sound analysis, and a heckuva lot to do with her tack to the left as she’s ascended the media ladder from National Review to the Washington Post.  Parker might want to stop by the offices of George Will and Charles Krauthammer to hear how her fellow Post columnists kept their principles and their audience.  After all, conservatives don’t need another David Frum telling them how out-of-touch they are.

Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute writes a thought-provoking piece for the fall edition of Breakthrough Journal.  In it, the conservative environmental expert and presidential historian discusses how to deal with three facts of modern political life:

(1)   Neither liberals nor conservatives will ever defeat the other side so decisively as to be able to govern without the consent of the other side

(2)   The divisions between Left and Right are fundamental and unbridgeable because each side has conflicting modes of moral reasoning that cannot be easily synthesized or bridged

(3)   The welfare state, or entitlement state, is here to stay

On this last point Hayward voices support for some of the reforms in Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget plan, and other conservative attempts to make social programs more fiscally sustainable by changing eligibility requirements.  Citing Ronald Reagan’s retreat from serious entitlement reform as a prime example of how unlikely it is for modern conservatives to simply do away with entitlements, Hayward offers a cautionary analysis against perennial cost-control proposals like “starve-the-beast” and balanced budget amendments.

As the GOP presidential voting gets underway in less than 50 days, this is a piece well worth reading, considering, and applying to those who would replace President Barack Obama.

Jennifer Rubin’s interview with House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) gives more reason to surmise that a pairing of him and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as the 2012 Republican ticket.  Rubin says that Ryan’s response to Romney’s entitlement reform plan was “effusive” and a clear statement of support from the leading elected conservative intellectual.

With Romney mired in an electoral no-man’s land – leading all other challengers but only garnering 25% support – adding Ryan to his team sometime next year would probably be enough to get disaffected Tea Party and conservative support otherwise underwhelmed with Romney’s checkered history.

However her presidential campaign turns out, Michele Bachmann deserves continued credit for speaking the truth no matter what the forum.  During question time after a speech in the liberal haven of San Francisco, the conservative firebrand made these distinctions between the “occupy” movement and the Tea Party:

“The tea party picks up its trash after it has a demonstration, so there’s a difference,” the Minnesota congresswoman quipped during a question-and-answer period after her speech to the Commonwealth Club of California.

On a more serious note, the two movements have “two different views of how to solve the problems” our nation faces, she said. Occupy activists believe in “government-directed solutions based on temporary gimmicks,” she said, while tea partyers believe in “permanent solutions driven from the private sector.”

Amen, sister.

H/T: San Jose Mercury-News

Byron York breaks down a CNN poll showing that Republican voters 65 and older (i.e. eligible to receive Social Security) favor Texas Governor Rick Perry for president more than any other GOP candidate.

This flies in the face of the current criticism of Perry’s widely discussed comment at last week’s debate that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”  As far as I can tell, no one has yet shown that Perry is incorrect since in both Social Security and a Ponzi scheme the money from later investors (or taxpayers) goes to benefit earlier investors (or taxpayers).

If anything, Perry should be applauded for speaking the kind of tax-and-spend truths necessary to get a handle on the nation’s fiscal problems so we can begin to fix them.

Admittedly, there is one noticeable difference between the programs that Cato’s Michael Tanner explains perfectly:

Of course, Social Security and Ponzi schemes are not perfectly analogous. Ponzi, after all, had to rely on what people were willing to voluntarily invest with him. Once he couldn’t convince enough new investors to join his scheme, it collapsed. Social Security, on the other hand, can rely on the power of the government to tax. As the shrinking number of workers paying into the system makes it harder to continue to sustain benefits, the government can just force young people to pay even more into the system.

In fact, Social Security taxes have been raised some 40 times since the program began. The initial Social Security tax was 2 percent (split between the employer and employee), capped at $3,000 of earnings. That made for a maximum tax of $60. Today, the tax is 12.4 percent, capped at $106,800, for a maximum tax of $13,234. Even adjusting for inflation, that represents more than an 800 percent increase.

In addition, at least until the final collapse of his scheme, Ponzi was more or less obligated to pay his early investors what he promised them. With Social Security, on the other hand, Congress is always able to change or cut those benefits in order to keep the scheme going.

New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas did today what precious few liberal commentators would: give Sarah Palin a fair hearing.  “Confessing” a knee-jerk reaction to Palin that writes-off the former Alaska governor before she speaks, Giridharadas nonetheless noted Palin’s striking analysis of the current political scene from a recent speech in Iowa:

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

This is the kind of anti-establishment populism that Palin articulated to victory against incumbent Republicans in Alaska (first, fellow members of the state’s Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, then the sitting governor).  Indeed, one of the main reasons John “Maverick” McCain chose Palin as his vice presidential running mate was because of her willingness to buck the system in favor of her principles.

As just what might those principles be as president?  Giridharadas says:

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.