Sarah Palin's presidential hopes surely can't survive this assassin's bullet

„Until Saturday, it was a fair working assumption that Sarah Palin was just a few weeks away from announcing her candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Barack Obama launched his campaign in February 2007, a full 21 months before polling day in November 2008, making February 2011 the obvious time for anyone with an eye on 2012. But if Palin had pencilled an imminent date in her diary, she's certainly rubbed it out now. Events outside a Safeway in Tucson have seen to that. It's not exactly fair. Palin didn't pull the trigger that killed six people, including a nine-year-old girl, in Arizona and left a member of Congress fighting for her life. But politics isn't fair. The cold reality is that the individual most politically damaged by the Saturday shootings is the former vice-presidential candidate turned reality TV star, bestselling author and all-round media phenomenon.

For proof, just imagine how a Palin presidential campaign would now unfold. Her fellow Republicans might steer clear of the Arizona killings in the primary phase of the contest but, if she somehow became her party's nominee, she would be challenged constantly about a single image: the map she posted on her website last autumn dotted with 20 gunsight-style crosshairs over 20 congressional districts occupied by Democrats who had dared to vote for Obama's healthcare reform – among them one Gabrielle Giffords.

Palin might try to argue that she wasn't really targeting Giffords and the others, echoing the absurd attempt by one of her closest aides at the weekend to pretend those rifle sights were really »surveyor's symbols«. But that won't wash, not when Palin herself referred via Twitter to the »bullseye icon used 2 target the 20 Obamacare-lovin' incumbent seats«. More importantly, there would be a potent witness ready to testify against Palin: Giffords herself. The most important 13 seconds of videotape could prove to be the clip, already running on a loop on American television, of Giffords complaining last autumn about that crosshairs ad, warning those behind such violent imagery to »realise there's consequences to that action«. That statement, full of poignant prescience, can't help but point a finger at Palin. If, as those around her hope and pray, Giffords survives, she would need to do no more than appear on a platform or in a TV ad in the 2012 campaign to indict Palin. She would embody in her very person the case that the former governor of Alaska lacks the judgment to be president.”