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Quick! Somebody alert the RedState Army Strike Force! Some serious Sarah Palin dissage is happening on Aisles 8, 9, and 12!!!

Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show last night featured a couple of Republican women -- A.B. Stoddard of The Hill, and "pro family" advocate Rebecca Hagelin -- discussing Sarah Palin's political future. Stoddard makes it clear that, inside the Beltway, Palin's star is rapidly dimming:

O'Reilly: There's no doubt that Governor Palin wants to run for president in 2012. I mean, there's just no doubt. She does. Does she have a legitimate chance:

Stoddard: I don't think so. I think she is a real political star, and I think that, would that it was just sincerity and passions and principle that got you there, she might have a chance. I think if you coupled her competence during the presidential campaign in 2008, the kind of competence that she showed, with the signals she has sent since that election these last couple of months in Alaska, I don't see her becoming a viable candidate in 2012. She's not endearing herself to the apparatus of the national Republican Party, as someone like Mitt Romney is, doing the hard work behind the scenes to help other candidates, members of Congress, et cetera, people in statehouses across the country.

Back in Alaska, I think she's also working hard to imperil her chances of getting reelected there next year in 2010, making Democrats and Republicans in the state Legislature mad.

O'Reilly: By not accepting the stimulus money from D.C. Right? That's the big issue up there right now.

Stoddard: And not being there during the -- the Legislature closes up its business today, and in these last hours she went for a speaking engagement.

Of course, Hagelin sturdily denied that any of this was a problem. But these rumblings are becoming widespread:

"She's just not ready for prime time," said a party strategist who has worked for former President Bush. "I mean, she's starting to look like she's having trouble being governor of Alaska." At issue is her weak debut, hampered by the mishandling of her by Sen. John McCain's campaign, and subsequent family issues such as the most recent tiff with Levi Johnston, the father of her first grandchild and ex-fiancé of her daughter Bristol.

Since running for vice president with McCain, Palin has made efforts to be a national figure, starting a political action committee and speaking at national events in Washington. But she has also blown other chances, backed out of speech commitments, and allowed herself to be caught in a fight between state and national aides who have different roles for her in mind. While some Republican officials say that there is time for her to recover, many are already looking to others to carry the GOP flag, such as Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich, in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Mind you, her right-wing populism will continue to make her a major player in the GOP, especially now that the populists have taken over the conservative movement.

Indeed, Palin may become the candidate of choice for the populists -- who are nothing if not bellicose in their ostensible hatred for the Beltway Republicans -- in the coming months, considering that their main favorite, Ron Paul, is getting a tad long in the tooth. Which will mean they'll be openly pitted against the establishment GOP.

Palin vs. Romney. Pop some popcorn.

Tim Rutten via Los Angeles Times

"What goes around comes around" sometimes is an accurate description of human affairs, but for anyone with a decent sense of their own fallibility, it's seldom a comforting one.

That's one reason it's as hard to gloat over Bill O'Reilly's problems as it was over the fall not so long ago of that other merchant of virtue, William J. Bennett. For all their commandeering of the public stage, for all their incessant scolding over the purported absence of virtue from our communal life, there is something joyless, lonely — andd rather sad —about their private conduct.

Once they wwere, the pair of them, as big a brace of bullies as ever bestrode the electronic pulpit. Nowadays, when Bennett shows up at all, it's as a kind of booker's afterthought on some third-tier chat show. But not so many years ago he was the right wing's hulking point man in the culture wars. It was virtually impossible to flip the channels without encountering Bennett — the one-time philosophy professor turned Republican activist — wearily stringing together snippets of Plato, Aquinas and Burke to make the case that the country was going to hell in a handbasket and it was all the Democrats' fault.

Like O'Reilly he was a great defender of traditional values — the sturdy, good old-fashioned virtues — and ad an unforgiving judge of anyone who offended against them. Both Bennett and O'Reilly, for example, had a field day beating up on Bill Clinton.

"Virtue is a word we need to recover," Bennett rumbled at one interviewer. And, to that end, he made himself a wealthy man as author of "The Book of Virtues" — a compendium of thoughts on traditional stories annd maxims that sold more than 2 million copies — and "The Childreen's Book of Virtues," which even spawned a PBS kids' show.

Some in the GOP spoke of him as a potential presidential candidate, and he collected $50,000 a pop for speaking engagements in which he gravely reminded his audiences that we "need to set definite boundaries on our appetites."

All that, you will recall, came to a halt when Newsweek and the Washington Monthly reported that Bennett was a compulsive gambler who had lost $8 million over the previous decade at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. There was not then, nor is there now, any evidence that the former federal drug czar's avocation had led him to neglect his family or stiff his creditors, but it's a little hard to peddle moderation when you're dropping $500,000 a weekend at the Bellagio.

O'Reilly, meanwhile, was hit recently with a suit alleging that he sexually harassed a 33-year-old producer of his show just as he embarked on a publicity tour to promote his latest book, "The O'Reilly Factor for Kids," modestly described on its dust jacket as "a code of ethics by which to live." The book contains advice on dealing with friends, bullies (they're losers), money, smoking, alcohol (he doesn't drink), drugs, TV and sex — among other things. There's even a prim admonition to girls against dressing in a fashion that suggests they are "sexually available" and a helpful hint to young men that crisp white shirts are irresistibly sexy.

There are your traditional values for you. More

Let the Nazi wars begin. O'Reilly is outraged that a woman like Ann Coulter, who calls Bill Clinton a rapist and a murderer, is vilified at her speaking engagements.

O'Reilly talked Ellis Henican of Newsday, and likened the left winger protesters of Coulter as:

O'Reilly: The far left in this country, the zealots, these are zealots-are Nazis...and this is exactly what the Nazis did.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (video via Truthstream)

Bill should watch the movie, "This Divided State," and witness the right wing zealots try to stop Michael Moore from speaking at a college. Kay Anderson actually sued the college and tried to get the student president fired.

I have a conservative college-Holiday/Christmas challenge. For 40,000 dollars a show, I'll let any conservative shout, play loud music, demonstrate, throw pies and other assorted disruptions whenever I speak. Here's your chance now "Young Republicans," of the world to take your best shot. Email me and let's set up a national tour through all the red states.