I am declaring the unofficial start of the 2012 presidential campaign right here in li'l ol' Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sarah Palin kicked things off yesterday by starting her book tour here.  The book, of course, is her critical dissection of the 2008 campaign, "Going Rogue," in which she explains how the McCain camp could've probably maybe won the election if they had just followed her advice, like not subjecting her to interviews with national television news anchors.

Why Michigan, you ask, which went for Obama in a big way? Because this isn't just Michigan, this is Grand Rapids. This is a town that still debates the moral outrages of homo-sexuality and evolutionary biology in the "Public Pulse" section of the local paper. This is a town where people were willing to stand in line for at least 20 hours for a 10 second conversation with Ms. Palin, because she is so - well, she is just so what this country needs. (Not everybody who stood in line got to meet her. After all, the campaign bus - I mean the book tour bus had to be on its way to Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a grocery store appearance this morning. But that's okay. They got pre-signed stickers they can glue inside copies of the book, which is almost as good.)

Meanwhile, across the street at the home improvement center, a liberal salient in this conservative town ( it's sign is blue, anyway),  the mood was almost as festive. Liberal shoppers were comparing a potential match-up between Palin and Obama in 2012 to the disastrous 1998 Michigan governor's campaign, where incumbent John Engler was assured of a victory against challenger Geoffrey Feiger as long as he kept his composure during the debates and didn't laugh in Feiger's face.

Well, to be honest, some of the festiveness was not due to the upcoming campaign, but seemed to be centered around the latest generation of snow-blowers, which come equipped with joysticks. Winter is a serious business in Michigan.