Palin is stream rolling to that nomination!
The woman is trailing Mitt Romney in South Carolina. Give me a break already.
Only one (Huckabee or Palin) will run. Palin is the second choice of Huck voters, and vice versa. So if one of the two is taken out, the other wins the state.
A bit of an oversimplification. There's also a chance neither or both run. Or only one does but DeMint also does and wins South Carolina. Even if DeMint and Huckabee stay on the sidelines, if Palin didn't win either Iowa or New Hampshire, and Romney won one or both and/or DeMint endorsed him, she'd probably be an underdog in the SC primary.
Separate thought, the race would be interesting if say Thune or Pawlenty won IA, Romney won NH and DeMint won SC and you end up with the big early 3 states all dismissible, or at least qualifiable, as backyard or home state wins.
Hard to say how that would play out without knowing how expectations had been built up in advance. For example, if Thune is trailing in the polls in Iowa until the last few weeks, and then surges into first place, I don't think his win would be dismissed as "only a backyard win".
