JOE McGINNISS

We can laugh–and we do–but others worry.

Howard Dean says, “I think she could win.”

Meanwhile, at Daily Beast, former Bush and Rumsfeld speechwriter Matt Latimer opines that Sarah has already won her war against mainstream/lamestream media, and that her victory could herald big things in next year’s GOP primaries.

Latimer writes:

Last week saw yet another example of the Alaskan’s unmatched skills in media manipulation. All Palin needs do is get on a tour bus and head east and Washington’s most elite scribes fall over themselves to find out where she’s headed, what she’ll say, what she’ll do. All of it was meaningless, of course…

Unfortunately, it’s not meaningless if MSM coverage leads the great unwashed (i.e. those of us who are merely citizens, and not members of the elite Beltway press corps) to believe it has meaning.

It’s a nasty, sordid back street affair that mainstream media is having with Sarah.

As I just wrote in the final chapter of THE ROGUE,

SARAH PALIN practices politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price. Members of our jaded national press corps excitedly stuff hundred dollar bills into her g-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.”

We sneer at her and write her off now.

And we might still be sneering–but also fearing–as Sarah rides a Harley up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, in January, 2013, to be sworn in as President of the United States.

Yeah, right, we all say: and pigs can fly.

But Howard Dean has actually played the game, not just commented on it from the sidelines.

Laugh him off–and Sarah–at your peril.

Sorry, make that “our” peril. I live here, too. And I’m not laughing.