Sarah Palin Announces Super-Secret Bus Tour

Sarah Palin has announced a bus tour of the east coast, fueling speculation that she will in fact run for president. But she’s keeping silent about where exactly she’s going.

According to the Washington Post, Palin has announced that she’ll be starting her bus tour Sunday with a motorcycle rally in DC, then visit New Hampshire and some important historical sites. Her team won’t say what these sites are, or whether the trip means she’s running for president — the treasurer of her political action committee claims, unconvincingly, that Palin’s getting on the bus “because she wants to see how this nation was built and get fired up about that.”

The Post notes that Palin appears not to have taken many important steps toward a presidential run — she hasn’t, for instance, reached out to party activists. However, the bus tour, along with her upcoming feature film and her new house in Arizona, may indicate that she’s still mulling a run after all. And in a recent poll of potential Republican candidates, she came in second, after Mitt Romney. So why all the secrecy? It makes sense that she doesn’t want to announce her candidacy until she’s absolutely sure, but why won’t she even post her tour dates? Usually, when people go on tour, they like to announce where they’ll be so fans can, you know, show up.

Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor has some ideas: “Maybe it’s a way to keep the lamestream media from getting ahead of her and doing dangerous unscripted interviews with supporters.” Or maybe she’s just worried about having to make detours in traffic. The scariest thought of all of: maybe she’s planning to surprise voters by showing up unannounced in their towns. That’s right, east-coasters: this summer, you could wake up to a mama grizzly in your backyard. You have been warned.

Sarah Palin Readies Bus Tour Amid 2012 Speculation [Washington Post]
Sarah Palin Bus Tour: Why Won’t She Say Where She’s Going? [Christian Science Monitor]