Run Sarah, Run!

Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and Republican Party vice presidential candidate, will be attending the conservative Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines on January 24.

This raises speculation -- by Palin anyway -- that she may be a GOP candidate for president in 2016.

Run, Sarah, run!

Do it for your country.

There are a lot of people, like me, who are waiting with open checkbooks.

When you announce your candidacy, I will send you a check for $20.

That's right... $20.

Twenty dollars!

No strings attached.

If you want to spend the whole thing on television ads or hotels, or those fancy clothes you like, that's fine with me.

I could send the $20 all at once or in installments, whatever you prefer.

Why would I make such a generous contribution?

Because, like you, I love this country.

This country is politically divided and you can bring us closer. We need a national figure who can bring the ideas of the Tea Party to the American people in a national election.

I am confident that once those ideas are put before all the American people, and not just people living in particular states or regions, we will see them for what they are.

Really bad ideas. Narrow, ignorant, and dangerous ideas. They are the ideas of what H.L. Mencken called "the booboisie."

Who better to express those ideas than you?

It was you, of course, who said the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty were a warning against socialism -- and not an endorsement of immigration.

It is in the best interests of the country to hear you promote Tea Party nativism. In doing so, the country will reject the Tea Party supporters as it did others before them, the Know-Nothings of the 1850s and the John Birchers in the 1960s.

Once this happens, the country can perhaps face reality -- and not the reality show that you and others like you mistake for democracy.

In addition, Sarah, you must run for president for all those people who depend on you -- comedians, satirists, editorial cartoonists, and people like me who wrote books about you, The Sound and Fury of Sarah Palin.

You've done more comedy than any politician since Richard Nixon. It was, after all, you who made Saturday Night Live relevant again.

You ran for vice president without knowing the duties of the office and you praised the integrity of our democracy, and then quit as governor after Alaskans re-elected you.

You called Ronald Reagan the greatest influence on you but didn't know where he was born and raised and you appear to know little, if anything, about his views on immigration, executive orders, bipartisanship, deficits, taxes, nuclear disarmament, and other foreign policy issues.

You gave us death panels. You give comfort to Obama birthers and global warming deniers. You did a radio interview with a Canadian comic who convinced you he was French president Nicholas Sarkozy. Your notion of family values is having your family duke it out in a drunken brawl.

The stuff writes itself.

The 2016 Presidential Campaign will be a long and excruciatingly dull one. But not if you're a candidate.

Run for president, Sarah.

To show my support, I'm willing to put my money where your mouth is.