Is Sarah Palin a head-fake?

I'm beginning to think so. I don't know if the delegates who hew to the religious right were planning any shenanigans at the Republican National Convention. But with the strong evidence that Palin is only being vetted by Camp Grandpa Simpson NOW, it seems to me that it's either the Palin nod was about McCain escaping his handlers and making a characteristic gamble that he cynically believed would rope in the Hillarions (and draw attention away from Barack Obama's Thursday night speech), or else she's designed to get him through the convention and seal the nomination before he can dump her (read: "She will resign 'for family reasons') and run with his TRUE soulmate, Joe Lieberman.

The only other explanation would be mind-boggling stupidity on the part of the Republicans, and let's face it: they just aren't that dumb.

Barack Obama is right that family should be off-limits. But so much of Sarah Palin's mythos is about her perfect family that's a shining beacon of conservative family values that it's she who has put its members out for public consumption. John Edwards was fair game because he presented himself as a devoted, loyal, and faithful husband, loving and respectful towards a wife who is older than he and doesn't look anywhere near as youthful. And he turned out to be something entirely different. Sarah Palin is about abstinence über alles, and instead she's the living embodiment of how abstinence education doesn't work.

I don't want to see Bristol Palin dragged through the mud. She didn't ask for this, and frankly, she has enough problems, what with being the child of a sanctimonious hypocrite and with a baby on the way and an upcoming marriage before she's even had a chance to be young. But she is now "a story", and once the convention is over, she provides the perfect cover for Palin to decide to bow out to protect her daughter from the blue meanies in the media. Then enter Joe Lieberman after it's too late for the Republicans to do anything about it. They'll laud Palin's family values, and she'll go home to Alaska to wait for the public's short memory to expire, when she can resurface again -- perhaps running for the #1 spot.

At that point Lieberman will be such a relief that no one will utter a peep. And then McCain can claim "the first bipartisan ticket." The upside to this for Democrats is that perhaps Harry Reid will finally wake up.