Sarah Palin's legacy

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the most boring white guy in the world (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) A couple of weeks ago, Team Red started leaking their veep strategy:

One Republican official familiar with the campaign's thinking said it will be designed to produce a pick who is safe and, by design, unexciting ' a deliberate anti-Palin. The prized pick, said this official: an 'incredibly boring white guy.'

If people start pointing their fingers at you as an "incredibly boring white guy," is that supposed to be a compliment?

Mark McKinnon:

The emerging consensus, which seems pretty solid, is that Romney's vice-presidential-selection process will be incredibly buttoned up, methodical, comprehensive, and ultimately'here is the key'safe [...]

Let's just eliminate the drama and suspense right now. Romney is going to pick Rob Portman. He is as safe a bet as they come.

The Wall Street Journal's D.C. bureau chief:

[I]f the goal is to avoid a Palin-like experience'well, Rob Portman is the un-Palin of 2012.

So Portman is clearly the most incredibly boring white guy around, because that's who everyone is looking at. That means he's got to be more boring than Tim Pawlenty or Fred Thompson, which is incomprehensibly boring.

But what does this say about Sarah Palin and her legacy in the GOP, when four years later, Republicans are so traumatized by her existence that they're headed toward the other extreme?

Portman's tombstone may someday read "Incredibly boring white guy," but that beats the shit out of "The very opposite of what my party was looking for."