Walter Shapiro makes a good observation that the GOP’s winner-take-all primary system improves the chances for a Palin nomination bid. There could be just enough true believers to push her over the edge in the early contests, at which point it would become increasingly difficult for rivals to catch up. After all, McCain benefited from a divided field and gained a prohibitive lead in the delegate count without ever winning more than 45% of the vote in any contested state. At first glance, this seems possible, but it isn’t going to work out this way.

There are a few reasons why this scenario for a Palin nomination is still extremely unlikely. The first is funding. If Palin is in so many ways a less serious candidate than Dan Quayle, it is worth remembering that Dan Quayle’s extremely brief flirtation with presidential politics in 1999 ended because he could not find enough people interested in backing him financially. When there was already more or less an establishment candidate in Bush, no national political figure other than McCain attempted to oppose him, and McCain’s insurgency that year collapsed quickly enough. It seems to me that Romney is shaping up to be the prohibitive favorite and heir-apparent, just as McCain effectively was going in to the primary contests. Aside from his own money, Romney is an effective fundraiser, and he has the experience and the connections from the last presidential run to make it more difficult for any other contenders to gets funds and endorsements. Republican primary voting does not reward insurgent candidates. Barring some unforeseen implosion, Romney will begin as the frontrunner and likely remain in that position. Any contest between Romney, the competent, wonkish technocrat, and Palin, who is the opposite of all these things, would result in a win for Romney.

Huckabee showed last year how far a charismatic politician benefiting from favorable media coverage could take a campaign that had little money and a small staff, but these were important factors in falling short almost everywhere outside the South. No doubt Palin could inspire a lot of people to volunteer on her behalf, much as Huckabee did, but that will not be sufficient. Palin is not going to have the favorable media coverage that Huckabee did, in part because she is not as good at handling the media. Where Huckabee used charm, she takes an entirely adversarial approach. Another problem for Palin is that Romney stands to consolidate movement conservative and moderate Republican support, as he will become the natural candidate for secular and non-evangelical voters, and she will be left fighting with Huckabee, Pawlenty and others over the voters who remain. A split field and winner-take-all system may work to Romney’s benefit just as they propelled McCain to the nomination last year. If she were to run, she would most likely become one of the also-ran, second-tier candidates.

Finally, losing VP candidates very rarely win the presidential nomination later on, and only once before has a losing VP candidate made it to the White House, so there is no reason why anyone would want to rally behind the losing VP candidate from a previous cycle. Even if Obama ends up having a lousy first term and has poor approval ratings, ousting an incumbent President is very difficult. When it is finally faced with the choice, the GOP is not going to make Palin its standard-bearer in the campaign to defeat Obama’s re-election bid.