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That leaves as your “strongest” candidates Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Romney was a one-term governor of Massachusetts. Pawlenty is partway into his second term. Neither has any political experience outside of state or local politics, unless you count being CEO of the Winter Olympics. Neither is/was overwhelmingly popular as governor, although they held their own. Neither is particularly charismatic. I guess you could include Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, but the former isn’t a politician at all and the latter isn’t a politician and was a disaster at HP.
I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know that much about Palin as governor, so I’ll have to outsource immediate opinion to erstwhile Alaskan Dave Noon at the generally left-wing blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, who vouches for her personal appeal (and it appears she has a gift for political theater), competence, and lack of corruption (heretofore the only famous thing about Alaskan politics, especially their Republicans), and casts a skeptical eye on the nascent Troopergate scandal.
YMMV–I’m not the most informed person to be listening to about Palin and am playing catch-up like most of America. Chill, was I think my point.
Update V: In the comments, Albert Williams (implicitly) asks–why not Kay Bailey Hutchinson? According to Ezra Klein, because she’s pro-choice, which also nixed Ridge, Lieberman, and Jodi Rell.
