I’m not sure I buy this analysis, and I have a sinking feeling (which I don’t really want) that the first of her two caveats may be true (that there’s some burgeoning scandal here we’re just not aware of yet), but even so.  She could be right.

Hell, I want her to be right.

MATALIN: Well, I think it’s really brilliant, with two caveats, one being that there’s nothing else, ala the Sanford fiasco. There’s nothing else that we don’t know. If all that’s there is what we see right now, it’s brilliant.

And, secondly, that she has a plan and people have a plan to put up with the conventional wisdom, chatterati and the political class saying how stupid it is, because it’s brilliant.

On the substance, there’s the key economic issue — I know everyone says — thinks it’s health care, but it’s really energy. And she’s the queen of energy.

And the second big issue for 2012 will be the role of government. And she has a record of reform and ethics reform and making government smaller and reigning in spending — all those issues that are getting increasingly important as Barack Obama expands on his agenda.

So — and her delivery was incredible — a charis — a less charismatic person probably couldn’t pull it off. But as — as already referenced, she will be freed up and liberated in the way Mitt Romney is here to run around and raise money and get political chips by spending it and get political capital. And she is still raising the kinds of crowds and money that she always did.

The problem, I think, is that even if this is all exactly what Palin says it is there are so many people on both the left and the right who desperately want to see her pushed to the margins of American politics (for reasons covering everything from disliking her for being conservative to disliking her for not fitting into the mold of what a mainstream Republican should be) that the simple strangeness of this move may be enough to do her in.

All the self-appointed experts want to say that Palin is stupid and “has so much to learn” and on and on.  But maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t do things like other politicians do things.