Palin to run for Senate? If only …

Oh, how I wish this story would come to pass: Sarah Palin campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Alas, I fear it’s only the passing fancy of the hard-core right wing of the Republican Party.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/sarah-palin-senate-run-alaska-mark-begich-93962.html?hp=r5

As one who is not a member of that wing, I too wish for such a campaign, if only to reveal perhaps once and for all how utterly unqualified Palin is to seek — let alone occupy — a high public office.

The rumor mill already is churning out grist that she might seek to run against Alaska Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich in 2014. Oh, let me count the ways this could end up badly for the former half-term governor of Alaska.

Begich already is saying Palin “quit” on her state by resigning the governor’s office the year after she and John McCain lost their White House bid in 2008 to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Since then, Palin has become a star “contributor” on the Fox News Channel. She left Fox for a time but then returned, where she faces zero serious questions. She rails against the “lamestream” media, which is anyone who doesn’t work for Fox or any other right-wing media outlet.

Were she to run for the Senate, she’d have to answer probing questions from those “lamestream” media types who would ask her such things as, well: “Why, governor, should voters trust you to serve out your term when you’ve already quit one high office just two years into your first term?”

Begich already is questioning whether Palin actually lives in Alaska. I won’t weigh into that mess, given that I live a long way from the Land of the Midnight Sun. But rest assured that Begich would seek answers to a question — her residence — that will cause her as much discomfort as the questions that surfaced about her record as governor.

And I haven’t even mentioned the reality-TV shenanigans she and members of her family have engaged in.

Sadly, Palin won’t run for the Senate. She won’t give up her lucrative Fox gig. She won’t hold up to the scrutiny that all candidates for the U.S. Senate should face.

It would be intriguing, though, to see her try.