"[T]here is a growing sense within the Republican political intelligentsia that Christie and only Christie is positioned to solve the major problems that will face the party in 2016."

And: "Christie is increasingly seen as the one candidate who might be able to bridge the divide between the establishment and the tea party that is in the process of ripping the party apart."

Chris Cillizza says as he ranks Christie first among the GOP's possible candidates for 2016.

I interpret those 2 quoted sentences to mean the same thing, which is making 2 inferences:

1. "increasingly seen" = increasingly seen by the Republican political intelligentsia. (It's the intelligentsia that do all the seeing and sensing that matters to pundits like Cillizza.)

2. "the major problems that will face the party in 2016" = "the divide between the establishment and the tea party that is in the process of ripping the party apart." (The tea party is the problem from the perspective of the intelligentsia, right?)

(Also in the ranking: Wisconsin's Scott Walker comes in at #4, up from #7, and the other Wisconsinite, Paul Ryan has fallen from #4 to #9.)

"Sarah Palin: A political obituary."

The Washington Post teases its readers like this:



The headline at the link is different: "What Sarah Palin meant." She is gone. The living human shell that once contained Sarah Palin still walks the earth, but Sarah Palin, the repository of political meaning, is dead.

WaPo readers feel a chill of relief and ease down into another Chris Cillizza column. It's his column on the occasion of Palin's parting ways with Fox News, and he's got nothing new to say about her, other than that now, she's gone. Really dead. Ding dong.