The Daily Parker

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"Our three year national nightmare is over!"

So says Sullivan, reacting to the news that Sarah Palin is done, one hopes forever:

Sarah Palin said on Wednesday that she will not seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, ending months of speculation and leaving the Republican field largely settled.

Palin had left the door open to a run but gave little sign of joining the race to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama. She made it official in a letter to supporters and in an interview with conservative talk radio host Mark Levin.

"After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for president of the United States," she said in the letter.

Sullivan interprets:

Her explanation is, as usual, opaque. But the idea that this person is protecting her family - after putting them all on a reality show, after deploying an infant with Down Syndrome as a book-selling prop, after pushing her son into the military, after sending her elderly dad headfirst into a ravine for a reality TV shot, and after using another young daughter as a campaign press bouncer ... well, it's as ludicrous as almost everything she says. I suspect she knows somewhere that the truth about her will eventually come out in full - as it has already in part, culminating with Joe McGinniss' devastating and exhaustively reported book, The Rogue. And the sheer craziness of this clinically disturbed person would bring it all crashing down. So she's bowing out. Call it cowardice; call it a rare example of sanity; call it a bizarre end to an even weirder game of hide and seek for the past few months. But the bottom line is: we can stop worrying about the threat she posed to this country.

I am not alone in my party to have hoped she'd face the President next November, because I'd like to see him win over 500 electoral votes and 45 or so states (why not 49?). But still, one fewer mentally ill person with national exposure sounds all right to me today.

Update: TPM has a delightful collection of videos reminding us of what we'll miss now Queen Esther is back to Persia.

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