POLITICS: The liberal press is having a field day attacking Sarah Palin as a bimbo and an idiot, while declaring here politically irrelevant. But the vehemence and mean-spirited tone of their assaults indicate that they fear her political future deeply, and the more they disparage her, the more popular she becomes.

Sarah Palin is drawing a lot of attention from Democrats and eager critics who dismiss her as a political joke. The launch of her "Going Rogue" book in interviews on "Oprah," Rush Limbaugh and a mid-America bus book tour have ignited a surprisingly large blizzard of derogatory Democrat commentary.

INTENSITY: Every few minutes another note from Democratic National Committee operatives gets dropped into electronic mailboxes across the media-verse -- helpfully passing on even the tiniest tidbit of negative news about Palin. The sheer intensity of the campaign against her indicates that she is more powerful than many realized.

In an ABC interview Palin said a 2012 presidential bid is "not on my radar," which is Politician for, "We'll see." One e-mail was headed "Palin's rough year," which overlooked her $1-million-plus book contract, the kind of rough patch even many Obama Democrats wouldn't mind enduring in the current job market.

It contained a quote from respected Republican strategist Mike Murphy about Palin saying: "She’ll have a muscular career as a political celebrity, but I just don’t think that she’s a strong political candidate.” Accidentally absent from the message was any mention that Murphy was a longtime political intimate and strategist for John McCain, whose feckless 2008 campaign staff comes in for heavy criticism in Palin's book.

NO FUTURE? There was another headline quoting CBS newsman Bob Schieffer saying Palin has no political future. That's the TV network that produced the disastrous Palin interviews of 2008 (detailed in Palin's book) and this year's late-night sex joke about her underage daughter. We also received word of a new survey: "Just over half of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll have an unfavorable opinion of her overall, as many say they wouldn’t consider supporting her for president and more, six in 10, see her as unqualified for the job."

One of the more interesting but not surprising anti-Palin bits came in news from the liberal HuffingtonPost, which published that ex-VP Al Gore's TV channel Current has broadcast a cartoon which says Palin's real Twitter name is "Gun-Ho" and refers to Palin as a TWILF. That's a play on a crude acronym thrown at Palin during the 2008 campaign, "VPILF." The Web item suggested disingenuously that TWILF stood for "Tweep I'd Like to Follow." The F actually stands for another off-color verb.

VEHEMENCE: But it is indicative of the vehemence already directed at the conservative female former Alaskan governor -- as if some see her developing into a danger before she does. Palin will have ample opportunity in coming weeks and months to rehab her image and soar into a new political life, at least as a bounteous political fundraiser or burn out.

What's very interesting beyond Palin's show biz book-selling promotion is a possible developing change in the way U.S. presidential candidates emerge as new media enables newcomers to become well known to voters faster than previously. All of the last three presidents achieved the White House on their first try. Each of them held another elected office at the time -- two governors and one senator.

However, at the moment, none in the current field of potential Republican candidates -- Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Tim Pawlenty -- holds an office, allowing them to raise the multi-millions and collect political chits full-time for a realistic 2012 campaign in which the concept of change to believe in will switch to the GOP side. That kind of selection process would be more akin to parliamentary democracies like Canada where prominent figures can become political party leaders and then get elected to office and lead the government or opposition.

HYSTERICAL REACTION: Illustrative of the hysterical over-reaction was the response of Newsweak (sic), which led the assault on Palin despite its own business woes. Last week, the magazine laid off more employees in its third round of staff cuts in less than two years. Newsweek is shrinking in other ways as well: Ad pages are down 29% for the year, while the circulation guarantee is slated to be reduced to 1.5 million in January, down more than 50% from its pre-2008 level.

Newsweek's current strategy is to court a smaller, demographically more elite audience by offering them a product less like the news weekly and more commentary-driven – which means Democratic. It's also to harness the power of the blogosphere and the 24-hour cable news cycle by stirring the pot with attention-grabbing stunts, like putting Palin on the cover last week in thigh-revealing running shorts. Palin panned the cover, calling it "sexist" and "out of context."

EXTINCT REPUBLICANS: This is what the magazine’s Evan Thomas had say about Palin: “Moderate Republicans, yes, they are not yet extinct, though most are in hiding, scoff at Palin and wish she would go away. But she's not going away…President Obama is no doubt happy to have her out there on full display. He cannot help but relish the prospect that the Republicans will nominate Palin to oppose his reelection in 2012.”

“Obama knows the long odds against a right-wing populist winning the presidency; no matter how good she looks in a skirt (or running clothes), brandishing a gun. He shouldn't be too cocky, however, because the death of the center is ultimately a problem for him and the whole country. If the Palinistas seize the GOP, they probably cannot take the White House. But their brand of no-prisoners partisanship sure can tie up Congress.”

POLARIZED: “In modern memory, Capitol Hill has never been so polarized. With conservatives refusing to reach across the aisle, it will be hard to get even the most modest health-insurance reform through the U.S. Senate, where a 41-vote minority can block legislation. Without bipartisanship, forget about reducing the deficit or doing anything meaningful on the environment, immigration, or tax reform.”

“Since taking office, Obama has so far failed to win the battle for the center. The post-election polls show that the country is, if anything, drifting to the right. Obama needs to win some of those drifters back if he wants to get things done. The Republican right, hell-bent on preventing that, aims to crush the last scattered remnants of the old moderate GOP establishment -- or any Republican who will work with the opposition.”

“By definition, populist movements run on a fervor that confuses honorable compromise with appeasement. This is particularly destructive when it occurs within parties. During the Reagan-Bush administration, the Bushes of Texas were never comfortable with the Reagans of Hollywood. But they worked at getting along. The easier course is to rant and rail on The O'Reilly Factor. That will get you a big cable-TV audience. But it risks turning off the larger public to politics altogether. And that can't be good for the country.” Would you pay good money to read those words of objective reason?

DANGEROUS TACTICS: But dismissing Palin may be a dangerous tactic. Republican Party rules are made-to-order for a well-funded insurgent to sweep the primaries before anyone figures out how to stop her. If Palin can maintain 35% support in a multi-candidate presidential field, then she is the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination. The secret of Palin's presidential potential is the Republican Party's winner-take-all primaries.

According to statistics, 43% of the 2008 GOP delegates were selected in primaries where the winner won all the delegates by winning a state or congressional district. As a result of the Republicans' to-the-victor-go-the-spoils method of picking convention delegates, Mike Huckabee finished second in 16 states and won a paltry 74 delegates for his trouble.

In the name of fairness, the Democrats have banned such winner-take-all primaries, which is why the nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton dragged into June. The Democratic Party's method of proportional representation meant that neither candidate could score a game-ending victory until all the primaries ended.

DIVISIVE FIGHT: In contrast, the Republicans have long been more concerned with avoiding a lengthy and divisive nomination fight than in designing a pure system of allocating delegates. That could provide a smooth Palin path to the 2012 nomination. While nothing is certain this far out, Palin seems perfectly positioned to appeal to the conservative party activists who turn out for the opening-gun Iowa caucuses. Moderate New Hampshire, of course, is apt to be a daunting challenge for Palin.

Next stop on the traditional GOP calendar is the firewall South Carolina primary where, candidates such as Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson (who were seen as too radical to win a general election) could be stopped early on. But Palin would not be a lucky fringe candidate who won a caucus or two; she would be a universally known charismatic figure who could beat the party establishment in this conservative state.

In 2008, after South Carolina came a series of winner-take-all primaries in which John McCain rolled up a lopsided delegate lead. McCain won all of Florida's delegates even though he received just 36 percent of the primary vote. In California, where delegates were allocated by congressional districts, McCain won 158 delegates with 42 percent of the popular vote. Mitt Romney received 34 percent of the California vote but was awarded just 12 delegates.

In Illinois, Romney won exactly 3 delegates despite his 29-percent share of the primary vote. Because of similar primary rules, McCain won every single delegate in the early February contests in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri and Virginia.

JUGGERNAUT: If Palin launches a 2012 race – and survives South Carolina with her aura intact – she could sweep the winner-take-all states without ever winning a majority anywhere. The Republican establishment (the congressional leadership, the governors, the major donors and national consultants) could all agree that Palin would be an electoral disaster against Obama and still be powerless to halt her juggernaut.

The best way to stop Sarah would be for GOP insiders to rally quickly around a single anti-Palin candidate. But such cabals rarely work in politics because there are too many egos involved. Would, say, Romney be so panicked about Palin that he would prematurely abandon his presidential ambitions to support a potentially more winnable candidate like maybe Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? Not likely.

Although the party rules are entirely different than in 1964 when Goldwater permanently decimated the Eastern liberal Republican Party, the guiding principle is the same. A well-known candidate with a passionate following who organizes early can win the nomination even if a large swath of the party believes that he or she is ill-equipped to be entrusted with the nation's nuclear codes. Thus, those that glibly dismiss Sarah Palin’s political future do so at their own serious peril.