In the NY Times today, Anand Giridharadas takes a closer look at Sarah Palin’s remarks from Indianola, Iowa, over the Labor Day weekend. He concludes that, perhaps, we’re seeing the emergence of a new strain of political thought from Gov. Palin. In the past, she’s espoused a muddy mix of Tea Party fiscal conservatism, along with standard conservative talking points on issues like domestic oil drilling and a pro-Israel foreign policy. When most people were paying attention, they found Palin’s views pretty unremarkable. But now, Giridharadas observes something different:

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

Might positions like this gain traction, even with liberals?

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

As I read this piece, I was reminded of the 2008 VP debate between Biden and Palin, in which the tiniest germ of this line of thinking was beginning to develop:

One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let’s do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don’t live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we’re taking personal responsibility through all of this. It’s not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.

So what’s going on here?

I think Sarah Palin is going to run as a third party candidate.

I think she looks at the GOP field and realizes that she cannot win the nomination in a field that includes Romney, Bachmann, and Perry. I also think she knows that if she ran as a third party candidate, she’d be free of the kinds of traditional campaign restraints that she seems to to despise so much. She could call all of her own shots and run on her own terms. It would be, well, very maverick-y of her.

It explains why she’s been tooling around the country to places like New Hampshire and Iowa in what looks like a campaign bus. It explains why she’s been so tight-lipped about her plans.

She seems to be taking some time to figure out how she can position herself far enough away from the GOP field to look like an alternative without giving up so much of the mojo that she’s developed over the past three years.

Running as an outsider against an incumbent president, even an unpopular one, and a well-funded Republican nominee, which both Romney and Perry would undoubtedly be, seems like suicide. But this is Sarah Palin, after all.