I have in the past been a skeptic of Sarah Palin. Not of her political talent, which is considerable, but of her grasp of – and even interest in – substantive policy issues.

When she abruptly resigned the governorship of Alaska on July 3rd, I wondered if she simply hadn’t the stomach for national politics. And the rambling, disjointed speech she gave that day left me wondering if she even knew why she was making such a momentous and potentially career-crippling decision.

But then a funny thing happened: In November, Mrs. Palin debuted her memoir “Going Rogue” with great sales, which was not a surprise, but also with a luminous and successful press tour, which was. The interviews she gave in promotion for her book (at least the ones that I saw) were much improved from those given during the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin seemed to speak about both herself and national issues with greater verve and confidence.

Other stars are aligning for Palin:

Several of her potential rivals for the 2012 Republican nomination find themselves suddenly, perhaps fatally, compromised by recent events.

Mitt Romney, for example, is watching the national health care debate work against his presidential ambitions, as the tortured and torturous Senate bill resembles more and more the regime he helped institute in Massachusetts – not something that will endear him to conservative primary voters enraged at Democrats’ health care offensive.

And there is Mike Huckabee, who charmed his way into a television hosting gig at FOX News after the campaign. Revelations that a man suspected of shooting and killing four police officers in Washington state had been granted clemency years ago by Huckabee, then governor of Arkansas, are widely believed to have seriously damaged his future electoral chances.

As a result, should they decide to run again both Romney and Huckabee will certainly find their respective tenures as governor under renewed and perhaps unwelcome scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Palin appears to be having a ball, trading comedic blows with William Shatner on the Tonight Show, receiving throngs of adoring fans at bookstores across the heartland, and weighing in on global warming in the pages of The Washington Post.

Could she be preparing, in a serious way, to become a serious candidate? It certainly looks that way to this amateur Palin watcher. If she can convince independent voters that she understands the issues, has thought them through and come to reasonable judgments about possible courses of action…if, if, if.

A lot of stars have yet to align for Palin’s path to the presidency to be illuminated. But that no longer seems impossible to me. In fact, I can now quite clearly imagine that someday, someone may say the words “Madam President,” to a moose-hunting mom from Alaska.

Wouldn’t that be something?

A parody of Sarah Palin’s book “Going Rogue: An American Life” has been causing huge confusion — forcing Palin’s publishers HarperCollins to take out ads to direct buyers to the official version.

The rival book, “Going Rouge: An American Nightmare,” was released on the same day as Palin’s memoir and features an almost identical cover.

Colin Robinson, co-publisher of the book, compiled by Nation magazine staffers Betsy Reed and Richard Kim, told Page Six: “We have been contacted by numerous media outlets across the country asking for interviews with Sarah Palin, or companies offering security for her while on tour.

One Web site not only thought we were Ms. Palin’s publishers but called the book ‘Going Rough.’

“We’ve noticed that someone, presumably HarperCollins, has been buying ads on Google redirecting people looking for ‘Going Rouge’ to ‘Going Rogue,’ which seems very unsporting of them.”

Victims of the “Rogue”/”Rouge” saga include CNN’s Political Ticker, which quoted Obama adviser David Axelrod saying he’d be borrowing Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s copy of “Going Rouge.”

USA Today’s section The Oval wrongly posted the cover of “Going Rouge” with a review of Palin’s book. It has since corrected the confusion with the statement: “Erratum: An earlier posting featured the photo of a different Sarah Palin book. The Oval regrets the error.” Last week, Fox News Channel apologized for showing the cover of the takedown book while discussing Palin’s memoir.

Read the whole article here.

And watching them react to her selling freight-car quantities of books is what we call…lagniappe. Laissez les bons temps rouler!

According to Entertainment Weekly:

We know that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin can hunt, and even field-dress a moose, but how will she take to poachers on her book sales? Start-up publisher OR Books has announced plans to publish Going Rouge: Sarah Palin An American Nightmare, a collection of essays about the maverick Republican with a title — and cover design — remarkably similar to Palin’s upcoming memoir. What’s more, OR’s paperback tome will be released on Nov. 17, the same day that Palin’s own Going Rogue: An American Life hits shelves — and one day after Palin’s just-announced, first-ever appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show. (A shout-out to Ron Hogan at GalleyCat for the tip.)

Going Rouge is compiled by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, two top editors of the left-leaning weekly The Nation, and includes essays by Nation regulars like Katrina vanden Heuvel, Naomi Klein, and Katha Pollitt. It’s the first release from OR Books, a fledgling outfit founded earlier this year by publishing veterans John Oakes and Colin Robinson that “embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business,” according to its website.

The Nation, the self-proclaimed “flagship of the left,” has been in circulation for nearly 150 years, making it America’s oldest political weekly.