Well, is she? Because of Palin loses in Iowa and New Hampshire, she is essentially done in politics and her celebrity status is destroyed – put a fork in her Fox News gig and her huge speaking fees.

The main problem for Palin is how profoundly she’s alienated the Republican Party’s elites — the elected officials, fundraisers, political professionals, activist group leaders and commentators who help shape mass opinion on the right — since her 2008 vice presidential campaign. Instead of cultivating them and seeking to use her newfound celebrity to build a genuine national political operation, she pushed them all away, preferring to chart her own erratic course. The result has been a public relations nightmare. Relying on her own instincts, Palin has found herself in one needless, self-induced and no-win controversy after another, with virtually no opinion-shaping elites using their clout to defend her. This was best illustrated in the aftermath of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in January, which influential conservative commentators took as an opportunity to inflict serious political damage on Palin.

Palin is now saddled with a truly poisonous level of unpopularity among all voters who aren’t conservative Republicans. And even within that group, her image isn’t what it used to be. If she were to mount a campaign, she would be entirely on her own, just like she has been since 2008, and that’s a recipe for disaster.

So, if Sarah Palin runs, she will be desperate for a win. Polls over the past six months have consistently showed her behind either Romney, Bachmann, Perry and/or RON PAUL in the early primary states.

In running, Sarah will be rolling the dice and hoping not to crap out.

If she jumped in, polls would initially show her in contention, but she’d be running a structure- and discipline-free campaign with no support from GOP opinion-shapers and on a message that really isn’t unique. Republican voters who haven’t yet figured it out would realize she’s not a viable option and abandon her for a candidate who seems to have a better chance. If she were to then suffer humiliating defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, Palin might suddenly find that the media isn’t nearly as interested in her every tweet and Facebook post as it once was.

In other words, those who just want her to go away should consider a Palin presidential campaign an investment: You’d have to deal with a few weeks (or maybe even months) of saturation coverage, but there’d be a good chance it would all end with Palin’s presence in our lives severely and permanently diminished.

Are you willing to gamble, Sarah?