Tales from the Trail

“I apologize to those whom are disappointed in this decision…  But I believe that they, when they take a step back, will understand why the decision was made and understand that really you don’t need a title to make a difference in this country,”  Sarah Palin said on Fox New after closing the door to a 2012 presidential campaign.

The former Alaska governor, and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, ended months and months of speculation on Wednesday by announcing her decision not to throw her hat into the ring.

While she isn’t hitting the trail as a White House candidate, Palin clearly intends to remain a player on the political stage.

“In the coming weeks I will help coordinate strategies to assist in replacing the president, re-taking the Senate and maintaining the House,” she said in a statement posted on  Facebook. She also says she’ll continue “driving the discussion for freedom and free market.”

Some Highlights from Palin’s  flirtation with 2012 presidential race:

September 3, 2011 – Palin wows Tea Party of America rally in Indianola, Iowa, with what sounds like a campaign stump speech. It was widely anticipated that she’d use the speech to announce her candidacy.  Two days later, she gave a speech at a Tea Party Express Rally  in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Sarah Palin says the biggest thing she’s thinking about  as she decides whether or not to run for president  is whether a title would be a shackle and stifle her message.

“Through my process of decision-making with my family and my close friends as to whether I should throw my name in the hat for the GOP nomination for 2012 – Is a title worth it?  Does a title shackle a person?” Palin said Tuesday night on the  Fox News show “On the Record.”

“Someone like me who’s a maverick? I do go rogue and I call it like I see it and I don’t mind stirring it up in order to get people to think and debate aggressively to find solutions to the problems that our country is facing,” Palin continued.

An endorsement from South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a favorite of the Tea Party movement, could give a boost to the  Republican presidential candidate of her choice.

But in an interview with CNN on Thursday she said it’s too soon to pick a favorite in the campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

“What I have told everybody is now is the time where we need to weigh in on asking them the hard questions,” she said. “This is the time we really need to be doing a lot of the listening to what their details are and what their specifics are and waiting to weigh in until we can really see what the full platform looks like.”

Fresh off her “One Nation” bus tour that may or may not have been a precursor to a 2012 presidential campaign, Sarah  Palin on Sunday likened the sputtering U.S. economy to a sinking ship.

“It’s very noble of President Obama to want to stay at the helm and maybe go down with this sinking ship,” said Palin, who herself  resigned as Alaska governor in 2009 with more than a year left in her first term.

“I prefer, many Americans prefer, that we start plugging the hole, that we start powering the build pump and start getting rid of this unsustainable debt that is sinking our ship. We don’t have to go the way of the Titanic,” Palin said in a  Fox News interview.

“Political courage or just plain crazy.”

That’s the explanation Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski gives for why, against her party’s wishes, she waged a write-in campaign to hang on to her U.S. Senate seat.

The ballots are still being counted but Murkowski looks set to make history as the first senator to be elected in a write-in campaign since Strom Thurmond in 1954.

“This is a whole new world for me and a whole new world for my colleagues,” Murkowski said in an interview with Katie Couric on CBS on Monday.

Arizona Senator John McCain says his former running mate former Alasaka governor Sarah Palin is a “visionary” for the United States.

“She has had a tremendous impact on this election cycle, as you well know, by supporting certain candidates,” McCain said in an interview on ABC’s “Nightline. “It is really a remarkable thing to observe.”

The 2008 Republican presidential nominee again defended his decision to pick the then relatively unknown Palin for the number-two spot on the ticket.

So you think you know Sarah Palin?

There’s so much more to the former Alaska governor and possible 2012 presidential candidate than is on public view, according to a new and very lengthy “Vanity Fair” profile, which takes readers behind the scenes and into “the surreal new world Palin now inhabits.”

It’s not pretty. Indeed,  her supporters at Conservataives4Palin have gone on defense calling it “a hit piece.” And Palin tweets that it’s “yellow journalism.”

The article by  writer Michael Joseph Gross  goes on extensively about a lot of  things  that do not cast the former governor  in a nice light, including: