Palin’ around China

Palin 2012?

After her trip to China, it would seem that Sarah Palin’s next step beyond the overpaying lecture circuit could be an attempted ascent to the presidency.

While her staunch conservative base would rally around her with tea bags and copies of the Constitution, it is not difficult to imagine “Joe the American” isolated and confused by this woman who could not even complete a term as governor of an ice chunk.

Sarah Palin’s trip to Hong Kong was undoubtedly full of surprises for someone so full of foreign policy experience that she applied for her first passport in 2006; she probably had her first encounter with a bidet – people who do not speak English – and the fact that the insides of fortune cookies taste like paper.

While she was busy wowing those at an international conference (probably full of elitists) with her scripted answers and “common sense conservatism,” she left those of us at home isolated; she took pot shots at our president and blamed our government for the financial crisis.

Any shred of authenticity she had has been replaced by faux-factual lectures and image-fostering charity dinners.

The trip does make it seem, however, that she could be trying to fix her image. She is moving away from the moose-hunter-next-door type and trying to appear both competent and informed with regards to foreign policy. Reviews of her speech, which was closed to reporters, were generally positive.

“She didn’t sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative,” Doug Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners, told the New York Times.

Perhaps there is something to the phrase: “Those that can’t do, teach.” The only problem is that Sarah Palin seems to be positioning herself to once again be a doer in 2012. Her trip to China might have been for greater purposes than simply paying off her $500,000 in accumulated legal bills.

We think it’s safe to say that Palin won’t be gone from the national spotlight for good any time soon.