Palin’s decision to get out was based on the age old #1 reason politicians decide to run or not: money. The truth is she didn’t have any money in the bank to run for a national office like POTUS. Wall Street would NEVER contribute to her, and if you’re going to run for POTUS you need to have scores of huge backers to financially prop you up for the long long haul. The Republican Party Establishment had ZERO interest in seeing her nomination - they’ve fully cast their lot with Mitt RomneyCare, who WILL (regrettably) be the nominee and who WILL lose in the general election, period.
So it’s really about money. And she may be right that her influence will be to support TEA Party type candidates throughout the nation running for Congress. She’s still a huge draw for TEA Party constituents. And it could be interesting to compare the audiences where she appears and the audiences where Mitt RomneyCare appears.
The C4P fantasy posts used to say that even if she waited to announce till last November that she would immediately have 10s of thousands of boots on the ground going door to door around the country emailing and making phone calls that bring in a pile of grass roots $$$$ donations. Then they said the big donors would follow the small ones not wanting to miss the tidal wave bus. Then she would whip Romney and the other RINOs with one hand, or just one pinky, and American would be saved...DA-DA-DA.
That C4P site posted the most entertaining fantasies, and many here appeared to continually buy them (based on the comments) like a starving squirrel finding an acorn in the dead of winter. I even posted two of them myself for fun.