The real question is whether she is getting out of the race. If she was, we would see signs. People like Peter Singleton, who has been campaigning tirelessly for her in Iowa, would have received a hint telling them to turn their energies elsewhere. The O4P crowd would have been told their efforts were in vain. Governor Palin is happy to string the media along, but not her loyal supporters.

My working assumption is that she has been running since 2008. She has been doing it on her terms and she is preparing to launch a campaign that relies almost completely on grass roots activists. I’ve previously suggested that she will run the equivalent of an “open-source” campaign. In the software world, “open-source” is software created by volunteers working for free. It is defeating proprietary software. An Android phone uses “open-source” software at its core. It has way surpassed the proprietary Windows phone. In political terms, “open source” means hundreds of thousands of volunteers working independently, but communicating over the web. They will work for her, for free. Whether she intends it or not, her campaign will reflect the “open-source” model. We are already seeing it in O4P.