Serving out the full term as governor to which you were elected and sworn into under your state's constitution used to be known as responsibility to the citizens who elected you.

But leave it to Sarah Palin to redefine serving out your full term as "going with the flow."

In fact, Palin's exact words - when she made her startling announcement on Friday that she is quitting just two and a half years into her four-year term - were, "Only dead fish go with the flow." This was wisdom that Palin said she'd acquired during the days she and her husband spent in commercial fishing up there in Alaska.

The Republicans who consider themselves possible contenders for their party's 2012 presidential nomination may have their eyes fixed on the political horizon. But they probably should be watching their backs, too.

This was brought to mind by comments that Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu made on national TV about Bobby Jindal -- her home state's governor -- who, at age 38, is widely regarded as one of the Republican Party's rising stars and a possible 2012 prospect.

Landrieu, appearing on C-SPAN's "American Morning", said, "Well, if he would stay home in Louisiana a little more and focus on being governor that would be wonderful."

It not likely that the Washington Examiner, a D.C. daily tabloid with a strongly conservative editorial page, means any harm to Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia and former state Attorney General.

But one line in its e-mail news alert Tuesday night on the Democratic primary for governor -- won by state Sen. Creigh Deeds -- is one that could raise some eyebrows among the paper's readers in the populous, politically crucial, and increasingly Democratic-leaning northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

"McDonnell is a conservative with strong ties to religious broadcaster Pat Robertson," wrote the Examiner.

There is nothing at all untrue about this. McDonnell, who grew up in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., received his law degree from Regent University, located in Virginia Beach and initially founded by Robertson as an adjunct of his Christian Broadcasting Network.

OK, readers, we need your help making heads or tails of this one.

The Minnesota Independent reports that Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, during an appearance at the College Republicans' national convention was reaching for a better metaphor to describe today's Republican Party than "big tent." And what Steele came up with was... a hat.

Yes, a hat.

As the Web site reported (with a link to a YouTube video): "Some people wear a hat frontwards, others cocked to the left, he explained. Some wear it backwards, he added, echoing a past statement, 'because that's how they roll.' But 'the strength of the party is in this: ... the fact that you're willing to put the damn thing on... The problem we've had as a party is: too many of our friends, neighbors, colleagues are taking the hat off, because we've decided we don't like the way they wear it... The GOP is not about how you wear the hat, but the fact that you want to wear the hat.'"

President Obama certainly has policy grounds that justify his cross-aisle nomination of New York Republican Rep. John M. McHugh to be secretary of the Army. McHugh, whose 23rd Congressional District way upstate includes the Army's vast Fort Drum, is now ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, the culmination of more than 16 years in the House focused heavily on military-related issues.

But it's hard not to notice that this is the latest in a series of personnel moves by the White House that have strengthened the Democrats' prospects in future elections.

Although McHugh maintained his strong popularity at home over nine House elections, his district -- like most of the Northeast -- has trended Democratic for president and gave 52 percent of its 2008 votes to Obama. Democratic strategists say they plan to stage a serious takeover bid in the special election that will occur later this year if McHugh, as expected, is confirmed as Army secretary.

Republican officials, groping for a formula for party revival, have been firing up their conservative activist base with support for "tea parties" that skewer big government and rhetoric that brands President Barack Obama's Democratic Party as "Socialist."

At the same time, though, GOP strategists have been working to recruit candidates for key 2010 elections who project at least somewhat moderate images that might draw them support across party lines -- making them, at least in theory, more "electable."

This is proving to be no easy balancing act -- as underscored by a rising conservative backlash to the GOP establishment's efforts to clear the Florida Senate primary field for Republican Gov. Charlie Crist.

You learn something new every day.

I wasn't previously aware that Dartmouth College in New Hampshire has a Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, named for the late, left-leaning New York Republican who served a long tenure as governor and later was vice president under Gerald R. Ford.

My first reaction was that it might be a center for intensive research into the liberal Northeastern wing of the Republican Party -- and other extinct civilizations.

Rather, it is a public policy center that, according to its Web site, "fosters a commitment to the ideals of public service and informed public debate" exemplified by Rockefeller. One of the center's units does public opinion research, which produced a poll -- as reported Wednesday by CQ Politics' Poll Tracker -- that indicates the 2010 Senate race in New Hampshire could be very close. Check it out.

Michael Steele must go as Republican National Committee chairman, writes Republican political consultant John Feehery on his blog.

The fact that this comes from a longtime GOP insider -- he was a top aide to Illinois Rep. J. Dennis Hastert during his tenure as House Speaker -- is interesting. Even more interesting is that Feehery says he originally thought picking Steele to head the RNC was a good idea.

"While I didn't actively support Steele's election...," Feehery wrote, "I quietly hoped he would win." He added, "I thought he had a winning personality, and he talked a good game about outreach" as he became the RNC's first African-American chairman.

Republican Senate campaign strategists hope to clear the 2010 Florida primary field for star recruit Charlie Crist, the popular Republican governor, who today announced his bid to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.

But not everyone in Florida's sizable and politically potent Cuban-American community will be lighting a cigar and raising a Cuba Libre (that's rum and coke) to Crist's fortunes -- at least not yet.

That's because one of their own -- Marco Rubio, a former state House Speaker -- beat Crist to the punch by announcing his own Senate candidacy last week.

Sure, the GOP brass has consolation prizes in hand to try to persuade Rubio to stay out of Crist's way in 2010: A run instead for the now-open governor's seat or some other major statewide office.

After more than 230 years of nationhood, you would think that our politics would have run out of new wrinkles. But listening to Republicans and other critics outraged over Arlen Specter's jump to the Democratic Party, you might conclude that the Pennsylvania senator just invented the idea of party-switching in the service of self-advancement.

Of course, that's not true. Not by a long shot.

One of the most unintentionally funny reactions to Specter's political bombshell came in a fundraising e-mail sent out last week by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. The pitch was aimed at raising money to elect more House Republicans to counteract a Democratic-dominated Senate (a missive that also underscored the fact that there is hardly any event, whether good or bad for a party, that cannot be parlayed into a fundraising opportunity).