Obviously, the American Conservative Union (ACU) didn’t get the memo. After all, Governor Palin is irrelevant, donchaknow. At least that’s what the mainstream media told me, and the mainstream media never lies.
Was that the sound of Katie Couric’s head exploding I just heard ? from the set of the old Geraldo show?
The other news is that this will be the Governor’s first ever appearance at the annual three-day DC gathering of thousands of grassroots conservatives from all over the country, and the timing couldn’t be better. ACU Chairman Al Cardenas sums up why perfectly in today’s announcement:
The trove of more than 13,000 emails detailing almost every aspect of Sarah Palin’s governorship of Alaska, released late on Friday, paints a picture of her as an idealistic, conscientious, humorous and humane woman slightly bemused by the world of politics.
One can only assume that the Left-leaning editors who dispatched teams of reporters to remote Juneau, the Alaskan capital, to pore over the emails in the hope of digging up a scandal are now viewing the result as a rather poor return on their considerable investment.
If anything, Mrs Palin seems likely to emerge from the scrutiny of the 24,000 pages, contained in six boxes and weighing 275 pounds, with her reputation considerably enhanced. As a blogger at Powerline noted, the whole saga might come to be viewed as “an embarrassment for legacy media”.
Mrs Palin, who suddenly resigned as Alaska governor in July 2009, is no longer a public official. She holds no position in the Republican party. Despite the media hubbub that surrounds her every move, she is unlikely to be a candidate for the White House in 2012.
She is, however, viewed with a kind of horrified fascination by many in the media, who faithfully records everything she says and does while at the same time decrying her as ignorant and even evil.
Toby Harnden’s American Way column is published in the Sunday Telegraph each week.
General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he’s confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker.
“I actually think the government will be out this year – within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months,” Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week.
He is grateful for the government’s rescue of GM – “I have nothing but good things to say about them” – but Akerson said the time for that relationship to end is coming because it’s wearing on GM.
“It’s kind of like your in-laws: It was a nice long weekend. We didn’t say a week,” Akerson said with a laugh.
And while he is eager to say goodbye to the government as a part owner of GM, Akerson would like to see it step up to the challenge of setting a higher gas tax, as part of a comprehensive energy policy.
A government-imposed tax hike, Akerson believes, will prompt more people to buy small cars and do more good for the environment than forcing automakers to comply with higher gas-mileage standards.
by Sarah Palin on Monday, November 8, 2010 at 5:58pm
Ever since 2008, people seem inordinately interested in my reading habits. Among various newspapers, magazines, and local Alaskan papers, I read the Wall Street Journal.
So, imagine my dismay when I read an article by Sudeep Reddy in today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the fact that I mentioned inflation in my comments about QE2 in a speech this morning before a trade-association. Here’s what I said: “everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher.”
In the wake of the Election Day conservative tsunami, rather than expressing gratitude that limited government conservatives and the Tea Party movement restored the GOP to majority status in the House of Representatives, establishment Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus lashed out at the movement and at Gov. Sarah Palin.
He even went so far as to blame Palin and the Tea Party for the Republican Party not winning the Senate — the same Senate that had all of forty Republicans back when the party ran on the big spending, me-too policies espoused by Spencer Bachus. Perhaps not surprisingly, the GOP establishment is preparing to reward Bachus with the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee, this despite his well-known failings in performing as the Ranking Member of that very committee over the past four years.
Rep. Bachus lashed out against Palin and the Tea Party on November 4th while speaking to the South Shelby (Ala.) Chamber of Commerce. “The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Gov. Palin endorsed candidates) like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware,” Bachus said. “Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate.” He went on to say that Tea Party candidates did well in U.S. House races, but in the U.S. Senate races, “they didn’t do well at all.” Bachus is mistaken in his attempts to place blame. In fact, it is the very policies he champions that cost the GOP its chance to win control of the Senate.
As an Alaskan, I am happy to see an Outside interest taking an interest in Alaskans – and as I said previously in a Red County commentary: “To Hell With Politics”: Lisa Murkowski Stabs Alaska Republicans in the Back
A few days ago, Murkowski challenged Joe Miller to return farm subsidies that he received in the 1990′s – long before he was thinking about running for office; so here is an idea – as Murkowski stated ”to hell with politics” – she should take her own advice and return all of the donations that were given to her by her former supporters who now are pissed-off because she lied to the electorate.
That should include the money ($5000.00) from SarahPAC – the $10,000.00 she accepted from the Senate Majority Fund - the $10,000.00 she accepted from the Republican Majority Fund.
That way, she can save what dignity she has left – wait, her dignity was lost when she started the write-in campaign.
To hell with politics like she said – she’s a hypocrite who back-stabs Alaskans with their own money and money from the Outside.
Update: It looks like Murkowski hired a Seattle firm run by a Democratic strategist to help Murkowski run the write-in campaign.
As key elements of the federal health care reform package begin taking effect this week, Sarah Palin is targeting 20 House Democrats, including three Arizona congressional representatives, who supported the legislation.
The “Take Back the 20” campaign focuses on districts that swung to U.S. Sen. John McCain for the presidency in 2008 — Congressional districts 1 and 5 as well as Southern Arizona’s eighth district, where Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords is facing Republican challenger Jesse Kelly.
“These 20 races represent half of the battleground districts necessary to send Nancy Pelosi back to San Francisco,” she told supporters on her web page, urging them to donate to her political action committee.
Sarah Palin stops by Fox News Sunday and talks about the Bush tax cuts, Arizona law, Afghanistan, and 2010/2012. She also has some tough words about Jan Brewer:
Jan Brewer Has the Cojones That Our President Does Not Have to Look Out For All Americans.
Awesome! Enjoy!
Hat tip: The Right Scoop.
The second-quarter numbers are in and people who pay attention are paying attention. It’s not the haul that’s so impressive — $866,000 is a robust figure but Romney’s PAC did more than a million in April and May alone and SarahPAC itself did better in the last half of last year than the first half of this year — but rather what she’s doing with the money. What kind of ex-governor-turned-commentator spends several hundred thousand dollars developing a direct mailing list?
One who’s keeping her options open.
The committee, SarahPAC, also spent nearly twice as much – $742,000 – as it had in any previous quarter, the lion’s share of which went to the type of list-building and fundraising (including its first major direct-mail campaign) that typically undergird top-tier political committees. It also reported its biggest-ever round of donations to candidates – $87,500 – and its highest outlays for travel costs, including $17,000 on private jet fare to crisscross the country for high-profile political speaking gigs, and speechwriting. It also showed continued payments for that speechwriting as well as foreign and domestic policy consulting, and its first ever payments to a scheduler…
But perhaps most indicative of a more traditional, robust political operation were the $330,000 in fundraising costs reflected in the report, including $154,000 to HSP Direct, a direct-mail vendor that put together SarahPAC’s first direct-mail campaign. Palin had previously used primarily online fundraising techniques, which tend to have lower overhead but cannot necessarily equal the return rate of a well-targeted but more expensive traditional direct-mail campaign. HSP’s campaign for SarahPAC, which started in earnest in April, sent glossy fundraising solicitations to more than 500,000 conservative households, asking them to help the PAC support conservative candidates in 2010, according to SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford.
