The race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination has started, though the election itself is 32 months away. Even in a place so brash and up-front as the United States there is some subtlety, at least at this stage, about the process. Sarah Palin, beloved of much of middle America despite her limitations, is doing the equivalent of turning up at weddings and bar mitzvahs and, as we say in Britain, putting herself about. However Mitt Romney, the man deemed by America's media to be the front runner, is (as his greater experience would seem to dictate) more sophisticated in...