As the date of Sarah Palin's keynote speech at a Tea Party event in Iowa draws near, many in the right-wing media are using it to promote a possible Palin candidacy. Fox News contributor Karl Rove is also citing a “campaign-style video,” writes columnist Byron York, that Palin released on her recent visit to the Iowa State Fair as evidence that Palin is “gearing up for a run.”

Andrew Breitbart's website Big Government, however, saw signs of a Palin run elsewhere: namely, in a Rasmussen poll on GOP candidates that did not include Palin as a choice.

Here's how an August 21 post on the site made that case (emphasis added):

For those who like to look at numbers, then look no further than a Rasmussen Report released August 16, 2011.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary voters, taken Monday night [August 15, 2011], finds Perry with 29% support. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, earns 18% of the vote, while Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who won the high-profile Ames Straw Poll in Iowa on Saturday, picks up 13%.

Palin was not an option in the poll, but Perry and Bachmann were and both share a base support of the TEA Party which heavily support Sarah Palin. Without Palin as a choice, the majority either went with Perry or Bachmann, unless you consider the 16 percent undecided voters. But with a Sarah Palin announcement, things change dramatically. Although Perry will capture a little more of the establishment crowd than Bachmann, you can count on a fairly equitable split of both candidates' supporters when Palin enters the ring. It's reasonable to assume that, given the prospect of a Palin candidacy, Palin will capture about 40 percent of Perry's supporters and roughly half of Bachmann's.

The author did not explain why it is “reasonable to assume that,” but instead moved on to explain how Palin's candidacy would change the Rasmussen poll numbers:

If you do the math, not counting support Candidate Palin might take from Cain, Paul, Santorum and the others, the result of a Palin announcement, fresh out of the gate, looks like this:

Romney 18%

Palin 17%

Perry 17%

Bachmann 8%

Throw in the undecided voter who will likely swing toward Palin, given the fact that they already had the opportunity to choose one of the other candidates, and didn't; it looks even more promising for Palin. If this particular scenario plays out, then the pendulum swings toward Palin in the lead when given the Mama Grizzly option.

It's hardly unusual for political blogs to speculate on the likelihood of various presidential candidacies. But Big Government's approach is certainly an unusual way to do that.