Freedom Party or GOP Overhaul… You Be the Judge

Marion Algier – AskMarion

Sarah Palin is definitely back full force and has opened the conversation as to whether the path forward for conservatives, concerned patriots and Reagan Democrats who feel they are not being represented by the GOP, either party, should be looking toward a new party or if there should be a GOP overhaul.  The former governor of Alaska floated the idea of bolting from the Republican Party if it continues to, as she sees it, to back away from the principals of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.  The Whig party was replaced by the Republican Party, with Abraham Lincoln as it’s first president and Ronald Reagan its modern standard bearer by which all others are measured.  Sarah Palin said she was open to creating new 'Freedom Party' if GOP continues to 'neglect conservatives'… common sense patriots of all stripes.  Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin entertained building a "Freedom Party" while answering Twitter questions on Fox News Saturday.

In response to one Twitter user who asked, “Would you & Mark Levin be willing to build a 'Freedom Party' if GOP continues to ignore conservatives?”  Sarah said:

"I love the name of that party — the 'Freedom Party,'" Palin replied. "And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah."

Whenever the idea of forming a third party is mentioned a huge debate ensues, as it should, but too often just the negative arguments surface.  In August 2012, the Examiner ran an article on how to counter the negative arguments.  The biggest argument is always: “Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote… They can’t win!

“Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate cannot/will not win.”

Here are two distinct arguments for the Examiner, as the case for a third party candidate being unable to win is much different than a prediction that said candidate will not win. Let us examine both cases:

RINOs and DINOs

1. Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate cannot win.

Anyone who claims this is claiming that the election process in America is rigged. Let us set aside the matter of whether this is actually the case and focus narrowly on the claim being made. A person who believes this should be trying to convince people not to vote at all in protest of a corrupt system, not trying to convince people to vote for Republicans or Democrats.

2. Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate will not win.

Anyone who claims this is claiming to be able to predict the future. We know that all psychics are charlatans and frauds, so such a claim destroys the credibility of the arguer. This argument is also an example of a logical fallacy known as circular reasoning. Don't vote third party because they won't win? How are they supposed to win if no one votes for them? Furthermore, this argument assumes that winning is everything, which is false. Third parties have to contend with obstructionist ballot access laws passed by Republicans and Democrats, which typically require a national-level or state-level candidate of a third party to win a certain percentage (usually 5%) of the vote in order to keep the third party on the ballot. Failing that, the third party must make a petition drive to collect signatures, typically numbering in the tens of thousands, and then (in many cases) fight off a challenge by lawyers and operatives of the two major parties.

N.B.: It is helpful to apply the arguer's logic to major-party candidates. For example, consider the U.S. presidential election of 2008. Statistical analysis shows that Republican nominee John McCain had no chance of defeating Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Therefore, by establishment logic, a vote for John McCain was a wasted vote. This logic can also be extended to the presidential elections in each state. Without loss of generality, a vote for a Republican candidate in a state that is safe Democrat is a wasted vote. After this counterargument, the arguer must either admit that using ability to win as a gauge of whether a vote is wasted is illogical, or accept that votes for anyone except the winner of an election are wasted, a premise which leads to a one-party dictatorship in which voting is meaningless.

You have to choose the lesser of two evils. A vote for (insert third party candidate's name here) is a vote for (insert name of major party candidate the arguer dislikes here).

This is clearly false, because if it were true, no other options would be on the ballot. Typically implicit in this argument is a logical fallacy known as appeal to fear. The arguer usually attempts to persuade voters to vote for their major party candidate by saying that a third party vote is a vote for the opposition candidate, who would be the worst possible choice. But this argument assumes that one would consider voting for a major party candidate if one's third party candidate were not in the election. If this is not the case, then the argument is invalid. In fact, the argument is always invalid because votes do not “belong” to Republicans, Democrats, or anyone else other than the voters who cast them.

Because of Duverger's Law and the nature of the American system, there will be a two-party system.

If this were true, we would expect to see a two-party system arise between Democrats and Greens in a place like Massachusetts, or between Republicans and Libertarians in a place like Utah, places where one of the two major parties has essentially vanquished the other. The absence of such a development seems to suggest that Duverger's Law is not ironclad.

Historically, third parties have not won the Presidency.

This is a statement of fact, unless we consider Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860 to be the election of a third party candidate. But this is simply a statement of fact, not a proper logical argument. There is however, an implied argument that the past predicts the future. Such a prediction only holds weight if we allow it to. As the saying goes, if you keep on doing what you have always done, you will keep on getting what you have always gotten. To say that the past failure of third parties to win the Presidency creates an unalterable future in which no third party candidate can win the Presidency is to claim that the people have no real choice under the current system. If this is so, then it would make little sense to vote at all, since the established duopoly cannot be removed by democratic means.

Your third party vote will accomplish nothing.

False. See the above argument about ballot access laws. Also consider the historical impact of third parties. While the Prohibition Party and the Socialist Party of America never won any presidential elections, both succeeded in getting their platforms adopted by the major parties after spoiling enough elections and gaining a large enough portion of the popular vote. There is no reason why this could not happen again, and one possible way for a third party candidate to eventually win is to have ideas that are popular for an extended period of time that the two major parties simply refuse to implement.

If your third party candidate was any good, he/she would have won the primary of one of the two major parties.

Perhaps there was a time when this was true, but it is certainly not true today. The increased statism and polarization of the two major parties have made it difficult, if not impossible, for a libertarian-leaning candidate to win the nomination of a major party. Centrist candidates also face problems when it comes to invigorating the more extreme bases of their parties. It is worth considering that moneyed interests, especially since the Citizens United v. FEC case, may be manipulating the nominating processes of the two major parties to nominate certain types of candidates while keeping certain other types of candidates from winning. Such a scenario leaves only the independent and third party routes for a true grassroots candidate.

There is not enough time for a third party to achieve sufficient power to influence events.

If this is true, then it makes little sense to vote at all. The duopoly has set us on the course that the arguer claims will lead to destruction, and we cannot solve our problems by using the same thinking we used when we created them. If this is false, then as time is indeed a precious resource, we should not squander it by supporting establishment candidates and thereby wasting an opportunity for change.

As you can see, the “wasted vote” theory has no logical leg upon which to stand. So whenever you hear someone use this argument, send them to this article for a proper refutation.

The comments I have read online… Twitter, facebook and comments on related articles have been very positive toward forming a 3rd party, replacing the deaf GOP  and for Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Jim DeMint and other fiscal conservatives and constitutionalists to form the Freedom Party if there isn’t immediate change in Washington.

But Oldironsides, Nelson Abdullah, of Conscience of a Conservative, whose work I generally like, had a pretty negatative outlook:

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been my hero since the day she was chosen to run for Vice-President on the Republican Party ticket in 2008 (after her electrifying convention speech at the Xcel Energy Center). Sarah Palin has always epitomized the strong, patriotic female conservative with her Mama Grizzly and Lipstick on a Pit Bull attitude. Now I suspect she is about to consider the biggest mistake of her life and I am afraid a great number of her loyal fans will follow her. Jeff Poor wrote yesterday on The Daily Caller, “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president responded to a Fox News Channel viewer’s Twitter question Saturday about the possibility of her and conservative talker Mark Levin abandoning the Republican Party and creating something called the “Freedom Party.”

When true Republicans stand fast on the traditional principles of their party they win elections. Unfortunately, there are too many Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) who have managed to destroy the image we represent. It was no coincidence that Sarah Palin was chosen to run along side one of the party’s biggest RINOs, Arizona Senator John McCain. Without Sarah Palin on the ticket, I and a whole lot of other conservative Republicans would have probably stayed home on election day in 2008. This is not the first time that a strong liberal influence has taken hold of the Republican Party. I was there in New York when the state Republican Party was dominated by ultra liberals Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. In fact, what the conservative Republicans did then in the early 1960s is just what Sarah Palin is thinking of doing now. Abandoning the Republican Party and creating a new political party. Sarah Palin is calling her party The Freedom Party, the disenfranchised Republicans in New York called their new party The Conservative Party.

If history has a way of repeating itself, Sarah Palin’s Freedom Party will become relegated to a distant 3rd or 4th place in the national political power base. The New York State Conservative Party was only successful in electing one candidate to a national office in the last 50 years and that was James Buckley who became a one term U.S. Senator. James Buckley was the brother of noted columnist William F. Buckley and shared his notoriety. From the inception of the Conservative Party their greatest influence was in cross-endorsing a handful of conservative Republicans in local elections.

Wikipedia has a rather complete story about the history of the New York State Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party of New York State is a political party in the United States active in the state of New York, holding “Line C” on ballots directly below the Democratic and Republican parties. It only operates in New York State, and is not part of any larger party.

In New York State’s elections, the Conservative Party is ranked fourth place in terms of membership, behind only the Democrats, Republicans, and the Independence Party, but ahead of the Greens and Constitution Parties.[1] As of November 1, 2011, a total of 147,993 voters, or 1.3% of New York State’s total enrollment, are registered with the party.[2]

History
Electoral History of the Conservative Party of New York State
The Conservative Party of New York State was founded in 1962 by a group including J. Daniel Mahoney, Kieran O’Doherty, Charles E. Rice, and Charles Edison, out of frustration with the perceived liberalism of the state’s Republican Party. A key consideration was New York’s fusion voting, unusual among US states, which allows individual candidates to receive votes from more than one party. The Liberal Party of New York, founded in 1944, had earlier benefited from this system.

The Conservative Party founders wanted to balance the Liberal Party’s influence. One early supporter was National Review founder William F. Buckley, who was the party’s candidate for mayor of New York City in 1965. In 1970, his brother James Buckley was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Conservative Party candidate; in 1976, he ran for reelection as a candidate of the Republican and Conservative Parties, losing to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In the 2004 U.S. Senate election, the Conservative Party endorsed Marilyn O’Grady to oppose Republican candidate Howard Mills and incumbent Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.

My strongest advice to Sarah Palin is in the words of someone she may admire: “You don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.” And it comes from the mouth of the most famous Republican of all, Abraham Lincoln. From an 1864 speech by Abraham Lincoln, in reply to Delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate. ‘An old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”

As far as national politics goes, third party movements only manage to split the conservative vote. Put a Democrat on the ballot against a Republican and a Third Party candidate and if the third party candidate is a conservative, the Democrat usually wins. The only recognizable third party we have today is the Libertarian Party but in spite of their conservative leanings, they seem to have been created for the sole purpose of legalizing marijuana. The Libertarian Party has virtually no international platform and wants a whole slew of state and federal laws repealed to prohibit one activity or another. In several noted examples, when a Libertarian Party candidate ran in a local election the Democrat always won and usually the votes gathered between the Republican and the Libertarian was greater than what the Democrat had received. A few noteworthy Libertarians such as U.S. Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie won their elections in Kentucky by running on the Republican Party ticket. And that is the only way to win.

No matter which way Palin and her potential co-founders of the proposed Freedom Party go… new party or the re-vamp of the GOP, it will be interesting!!  As the CPAC Star said in her March Speech, “We are not here to rebrand a party… We are here to rebuild a country!”

You be the judge…

Related:

Rush Limbaugh: GOP 'Authoring Its Demise' With Immigration Reform Bill

Technorati Tags: Freedom Party,3rd Party,Third Party,Palin,Sarah Palin,Leadership,Mark Levin,you be the judge,GOP Establishment,Amnesty Bill,RINO,RINOs,DINOs,GOP Overhaul,Whigs,history,Conservatives,saving America,SarahPac,Lincoln,Reaganesque,Reagan,Limbaugh,Republicans,immigration

Sarah Palin gearing up for 2014: “Loaded For Bear”

The Right Scoop: Fantastic video from Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC getting ready to start picking more winners for 2014:

Video: Loaded for Bear

From SarahPac that came with the video:

SarahPAC supporters,

The 2014 elections are just twenty months away. We appreciate your support; together we have elected many great commonsense conservatives over the past four years. Together, we will keep fighting to support these bold candidates. Please take a moment to share this video with your friends and learn more by visiting sarahpac.com. You can also directly help SarahPAC by donating here.

- Tim Crawford, Treasurer – SarahPAC

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin,SarahPac,Palin,Election 2014,2014 Election,Mama Grizzlies,The Palin Efect,elections,patriotism

Sarah on the Cover of Newsweek… I Can Win!!

Yes you can!

“Of course she is running. She just is refusing to play by the “rules” the establishment and the media have set. There isn’t the slightest reason to announce yet, all that would do is give the enemy a fixed target. It would force every aspect of every thing she does to fit into campaign law.

The bus tour would have been impossible.

If this was the 1980 election, Reagan’s announcement would still be several months away.  November 13th.

She is Sun Tsu, refusing to march onto a battlefield that her enemy is standing on, fully prepared, in a location they chose. And she is attacking elsewhere.

It is driving them bats*^t insane. They are running this cover to goad her. They exclude her from every poll to goad her (“see, we excluded her until she announces”… Guliani is in some polls but not Sarah)

Meanwhile, she is touring the primary states in the NE, Touring Iowa… etc

Oh yes, she is running. But she is employing asymmetrical warfare.”

By: Andrea Shea King  - The Radio Patriot

The Extraordinary Sarah Palin

by Dan Riehl  -  Big Government

When it comes to former GOP Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, if any ordinary Republican politician could generate as much contemporary free media coverage, including a new high profile cover story from Newsweek, while a positive full length documentary on their legitimate political career, The Undefeated, was opening nationally on July 15, the Republican establishment and most all of the base would be clamouring for him or her to enter the race for President in 2012. But Sarah Palin is no ordinary Republican politician.

Based upon my own observations, along with some recent conversations with friends, including Andrew Breitbart, who recently spent some time talking with Palin, my image of Palin has been becoming more well-defined of late. Take, for instance, the only real criticism I could find in the Newsweek piece. It jibes with another criticism I’ve observed, that she too often engages her critics directly, as opposed to allowing surrogates to do it for her. Are these valid criticisms of Palin? Along with providing some insight into her - she’s a fighter, it might also tell you much about how you view Palin. If you’re looking for an ordinary politician, Sarah Palin ain’t it.

This formula—bucking Republicans and counting on the situational cooperation of Democrats—made for a fragile governing model, one further attenuated by the fact that political insiders found Palin too sensitive to criticism and too eager to deal in payback. But to the public she was a heroine, with an approval rating above 80 percent two years into her term, making her by far the most popular governor in the country.

Once I put aside any notion of a mostly plastic, glad-handing politician and contemplated how I myself might actually react in this, or that, situation Palin has faced, a clearer image of her as an every man politician began to take shape. There’s a good chance I’d have handled a good deal of the criticism precisely as has she in this, a new media age. And she is far more in touch with the concept of new media, than is almost any other American politician – hence the reliance on Facebook and Twitter to get her message out.

“The mainstream press is becoming less and less relevant,” she said, adding that she would have no hesitation in shunning media outlets she does not trust.

As The Undefeated makes clear (my earlier review here), she’s not in politics because her daddy held office, or won, or was denied a Presidential nomination, or election. She entered politics as an individual because she cared about the relationship between government and the people and wanted to make a difference. Sarah Palin was not schooled by some mostly Eastern U.S. Preparatory and Secondary school system one might think is the only acceptable schooling for serious American political leadership today. In fact, in many ways, that monopoly has all but driven America off a cliff - including under the current administration.

Of course, Ronald Reagan wasn’t a product of it, either, as a matter of fact.

Still, even some of her biggest fans may have a mistaken notion of the kind of politician Sarah Palin actually is. True, she’s a Conservative … but she’s also a common sense pragmatist, not an uncompromising ideologue, as portions of the media would have one believe. As wonderful as conservative ideals are, rigid thinking can not always solve every problem. As her tenure in Alaska demonstrated, first and foremost, Sarah Palin is a problem solver.

The centerpiece achievement was a significant tax hike on the profits derived from Alaskan oil, which pro-industry Republicans opposed, and which passed only because Palin allied herself with the legislature’s Democrats (who insisted, to Palin’s acquiescence, on raising the tax even higher).

So, why are there not more establishment voices calling for such a visible and pragmatic Palin to toss her hat in the ring? My guess is, because she is more one of us, than any political establishment. If you begin to understand – and accept that – you may be beginning to understand Palin and what she represents to so many. Unfortunately, as shocking as it may seem, the fact is, more than fearing the political opposition in the form of Democrats, or Republicans, what America’s political establishment fears most of all is “we the people.” That, in large part, is what Ronald Reagan represented leading to such strong opposition to him from the GOP establishment, as well.

“You know, I rarely use the term ‘bipartisanship,’” she said. “I use the term ‘independent.’ Piper’s middle name is ‘Indie.’ That’s the Alaskan way of life. Seventy-three percent of Alaskans aren’t registered Republican or Democrat, they’re independent. Todd’s not a registered Republican. Most of the people I know, they’re independent people saying, ‘Just use common sense.’”

If there’s a conclusion to be inferred from the Newsweek item, it would seem to be that she is running. Her family seems on board with it and that is the only real obstacle she mentions, after all. However, that’s merely an inference and, as with some other potential late entries, the question remains open. What’s also true of Palin is that, until she says it, assuming otherwise is no guarantee of accuracy.

What is clear is that her road to any presumed GOP nomination would not be easy, or typical. It would likely require a far greater number of people to actually understand Sarah Palin apart from the many characters and caricatures the media has made her out to be. That said, if it did, or does happen, I do believe that, not only could she win the GOP nomination, but she could win the Presidency, as well.

At this point thirty-years ago, Reagan was thought to be both unelectable and unacceptable, even as a nominee. Not only did he go on to win the nomination and Presidency in 1980, his landslide re-election in 1984 remains as a testament to the success of common sense, mostly conservative-based politics capable of reaching across, if not erasing, party lines in America.

I wouldn’t want to have to assign odds as to the likelihood that Sarah Palin could repeat such a hallmark record of achievement in American politics. However, if one thinks it impossible at this point, then one may not know, or understand, Sarah Palin and her appeal, or the American people, at all. After all, both are extraordinary and have proven themselves capable of accomplishing rather exceptional things before.

Why Sarah Can Win

Long Lost Sarah Palin Emerges From Released Emails Victoriously

Fear Factor: Palin Derangement Syndrome

A steady whiff of B.O. emanating from the White House

By: Andrea Shea King  -  The Radio Patriot – re-posted at the NoisyRoom

TMH:  “Claudia at I Own the World discovered this gem.”  “Some wordsmiths are more clever than others.  This one speaks truth through humor and I love it! It makes my job so much easier – mocking the left while bringing you the truth. Compare this with what the left touts as humor and/or truth. No contest!”, Claudia~

It is, as they say, a piece of work. A gem…

America has gotten a steady whiff of B.O. emanating from the White House and its environs for two and a half years now, and even those notoriously asnomic leftists closest to our foundering President are holding their noses.

Obama’s devoted followers, mainly the leftist simpletons in the press claque, continue to find imaginative new ways to structure polling questions designed to maintain the illusion that B.O. is not only still popular, but well-nigh unbeatable.

The fact of the matter is that if the election were to be held today, Obama would lose by 5 points to your mother-in-law, by 7 points to Muammar Ghaddafy, and possibly by double digits to Gary Busey. David Axelrod might think it’s still cool to like Obama, but who’s taking advice on coolness from a guy with a Hitler comb-over and mustache? Check the photos — they appear to have separated at birth. Maybe the people watching Jersey Shore still think it’s cool to be stupid, but they aren’t very likely to be able to carry the election for Obie Done.

With all the talk about the weakness of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, did you ever stop to think how the Flower of Affirmative Action got nominated in the first place? The Democrat slate was so weak in 2008 that über-sleazoid John Edwards was a serious contender and actually bamboozled 4.5 delegates to vote for him at the convention, despite the fact that he was battling with National Enquirer reporters in hotel bathrooms to keep his baby-mama under wraps. Other serious contenders included the morally bankrupt Chris Dodd, the charismatically bankrupt New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, the intellectually bankrupt Joe Biden and the spiritually, philosophically, and morphologically bankrupt queen of spite and smoocher of the Arafats, Hillary Clinton.  Did I leave out Dennis Kucinich?  Doesn’t every serious person leave out Dennis Kucinich?

Never mind that pre-Tea Party Republicans allowed the media and the cross-over primary voting processes in several states to choose Senator Doofus of Arizona as our candidate, a man who deservedly served as the caboose in his graduating class from the Naval Academy. McCain is such a pitiful excuse for a Republican that he makes the other RINOs look Reaganesque in comparison.

The B.O. Media has already found its 2012 version of McCain and is scavenging to gin up support for Jon Huntsman. He’s pals with B.O. and the Chinese and believes in global warming. I guess you could say that Romney and Huntsman are members of the Latter Day Republicans.

Huntsman, like his aisle-crossing predecessor McCain, may just be the only nominally Republican candidate incapable of thrashing the golfing, basketball playing, ice-cream cone eating, Israel-bashing, United Kingdom-dissing, czar-appointing, bowing and scraping impostor currently spending America's money like an aircraft carrier full of drunken sailors.  Huntsman's speeches all have that John McCain coda: "I respect the President."

Trouble is, fewer and fewer do. Conservatives believe he is a socialist and redistributionist. Liberals think he's taken on too many of George Bush's policies.  Moderates don't really believe much of anything anyway, but you can bet they concur with the libs and conservatives that B.O. is a liar.  It's gotten so bad that when B.O. tried to suggest to his own Democratic National Committee that his administration had created over 2.1 million jobs in the past 15 months, the closed caption script suggested laughter.  Of course he has since gotten the Huffington Post and his WH staff to switch the description from "Laughter" to "Applause," but the Caesar from Indonesia is no longer fooling anybody.

If it weren't for the torrential rains across the Midwest and the unusual tornado activity there, people in Idaho would be able to smell this administration, whose policies decidedly stink on ice. His foreign policies are Carteresque, his economic policies are Hooveresque, and his administration's ethics are Clintonesque.  B.O.'s approach to the Presidency is so abhorrent, that he may actually be able to accomplish something that even Jimmy Carter couldn't do: he might actually lose the votes of liberal Jewish Americans.

It must have been hard for the crossover voters like Christopher Buckley and Peggy Noonan in 2008 to pull the lever in the voting booth while holding their noses. It should be even harder in 2012 with the other hand held over their eyes. You can bet B.O. will find some new ACORN style assistants to help out in the voting booth, but even that won't be enough.

B.O. is Hawaiian toast. The latest polls show that merely 30% of voters intend to vote for Obama in 2012. Support for B.O. is falling like the Roadrunner with an anvil racing off a cliff.

He will be lucky to carry Hawaii and Bernie Sanders.

B.O.unbeatable? B.S.

By Ralph Alter is a regular contributor to American Thinker. He blogs at www.rightot.blogspot.com

This brings up a valid point that we MUST not allow the left to choose our candidate. I don’t really think we will be fooled again, but we must keep vigilant. I make sure that whenever I speak with anyone about the potential GOP nominee that I stress that we intend to choose our candidate based on their TRUE conservative values and principles. ANYONE can beat Obama, but we don’t want just an Obama-lite, we want a true ANTI-Obama.

Over the weekend, Michele Bachmann caught up with Mitt Romney in the Iowa Polls, Herman Cain and Santorum’s (meet Rick Santorum video begins at 15:54) campaigns are looking up and Sarah Palin has hit her all time high without entering the race and more and more analysts are waging that she could win!  As Rush said, that is why the left fears and demonizes her.   There is hope my friends for real change!  Ask Marion~

BTW… If you are not making American Thinker, IOTW, the Noisy Room and Knowledge Creates Power regular stops.  whattsa matta witchou?

h/t to George King

Related:

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Donna Brazile: Yes, I said Sarah Palin for President

Why Palin Can Win

Long Lost Sarah Palin Emerges From Released Emails Victoriously

Yes, I Said Sarah Palin for President

In my last column, I presented reasons why Sarah Palin should not be dismissed as a presidential hopeful. Because one column alone couldn't cover everything, I offer another cluster of reasons below, starting with an important one: She has time.

Palin can wait until the last possible moment to officially file her intent to run. Others who have already filed or are looking to file need to start developing traction-generating strategies now. However, Palin has both name recognition and the ability to quickly raise the funds needed to pull together a massive organization in the key early states. This media-savvy political professional can decide when it is the right time for her to file.

She voluntarily kept a low profile after her response to the Arizona shootings earlier this year brought her so much negative publicity. Prior to the tragedy, Palin on her website had politically targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (a victim of the shootings) district and others, using the crosshairs of a rifle sight. She, somewhat gracefully, retired from the public scene for a respectable time before re-emerging at the Rolling Thunder rally in Washington, D.C.

Another reason Palin may get the GOP nod: She can get away with stunts that would sink any other politician. Can you imagine former Gov. Mitt Romney crashing a non-political event for our veterans (Rolling Thunder) for obvious political gain?

When Palin emerged from her self-imposed media blackout, the press folks behaved as if they were starved for her. No other Republican contender can generate her kind of excitement, positive or negative.

A just-released Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll found that almost 4-in-10 Republicans are unhappy with their party's current choices for nominee. Results like these lead to a perceived vacuum that candidates such as Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann feel positioned to fill. Donald Trump felt poised to fill it. He floated his trial balloon only to see it popped in short order.

The Republican Party has taken a significant shift to the political right. I can remember the days when the party was an inclusive organization. But, Republican legends like former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Sen. Jacob Javits of New York and Clifford Case of New Jersey are gone with history.

Palin certainly doesn't fill that void, but she may be served by it. Of all the people set to cash in if the tea party retains its strength, Palin may be first among them.

Why? Let me explain: Moderate Republicans are in danger of extinction. After the 2008 election, some polls showed the GOP barely had the public's support. So, the party decided to work with this faction. It concentrated on issues that brought them storming to town hall meetings and into the election booth.

Unfortunately for the pragmatists who run the party, they birthed the tea party Republicans. Tea partiers ran in the primaries and won. Now they are strong enough to tell Speaker John Boehner what his limits are. And they do.

They aren't done. Tea party Republicans are fielding candidates against the handful of moderates who remain in the party such as Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Olympia Snowe of Maine.

Tea party Republicans tolerate no dissent from their political orthodoxy. They are out -- successfully, I believe -- to purge the party of all to their left, and even some to their right. Meanwhile, at the heart of the Republican Party, are leaders like Bachmann who are eager to fill the void and who see Palin as a real threat. Ed Rollins, Bachmann's campaign manager (a veteran strategist), took a swipe at Palin this week (then retreated).

Whether we agree with them, when Bachmann and Palin preach -- oops, I mean "campaign" -- you know they believe what they are saying. Both are pretty brunettes who can't help but cut into each other's support because they appeal to the same base. It is from that fractured base that I imagine Palin ascending.

Palin is the candidate with the most crossover appeal between groups. She can talk to the tea partiers, the radicals -- even the nearly extinct moderates.

When scripted, she can be rather convincing, especially compared to other candidates. The others are too drab -- in policy, in convictions, in media smarts. They just can't compete with her star power. From here, 2012 looks like a slam-dunk for Sarah Palin.

Donna Brazile is a political commentator on CNN, ABC and NPR, and a contributing columnist to Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.

Source: mlive.com

 

Palin Movie to Debut in Key Presidential Caucus State

Can Any Republican Presidential Candidate Withstand Being Palinized?

Sarah Palin’s Intelligence and the Stupidity of the Media

I’m starting to lose faith in the media’s propagandist idea that “if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.” Sadly, there is no definitive version of this quote and we do not know who said it, though it is mostly attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. With the stock market losing value daily, unemployment above 9 percent again, home prices still falling, four new wars started by Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, the media are preoccupied with the emails of a former governor from Alaska and what she said about Paul Revere.

What I mean by “losing faith” is that I’m beginning to believe those in the mainstream media are absolutely stupid. We think of the dumbing down of America, and yet we somehow believe those who think of themselves as elites are immune to this dumbing down. The Liberal elites have been preaching nonsense for almost a century. By now, I believe, they are as stupid as they think the average American is.

Over the past week or so, the MSM has been all over Sarah Palin for claiming that Paul Revere’s ride had been to warn the British that they weren’t going to take away the weapons of armed Americans. They called her stupid. Over the following days the stupidity of the media became evident. Not only was Palin right, but the media (and most schools) view Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem about Paul Revere’s ride as history, and that’s basically it. That’s not to say Longfellow’s poem is wrong, but when there is a primary source to view from the man who actually rode the ride, that trumps the secondary account. There is a letter that Paul Revere wrote in 1798 that details the entire ride, and in it he mentions warning the British that they wouldn’t be able to disarm the Americans.

I want to point out that Sarah Palin’s remark didn’t say Paul Revere set out to to warn the British, just that he had. Here’s the whole comment:

H]e who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells, that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free.

Pajamas Media has a great summary of the reaction to Palin’s remark:

The tri-part reaction to Palin’s remark — (1) she’s stupid; (2) she was only unknowingly right; (3) she was right, but she can’t speak good English — was an elite response. It was the reaction of a class that prizes, above all else, educational credentials and the ability to speak well.

Is the media lying and trying to continue to make Sarah Palin out to be some stupid bimbo or they just misinformed? I think the truth is somewhere between lies and ignorance. They do outright lie about her, but they also have no view of history or the world outside of their elitist bubble. They take what one elite Liberal says to be fact and they go with it. “He can’t be wrong because he believes what I believe so it’s true. He did his research so I don’t have to.” It’s like a scientist who has a hypothesis and in order to prove it, he comes up with the facts to fit the hypothesis without actually testing the scenario. Had the media done its job, their information staff would have dug up the Paul Revere letter.

We all know the media’s Liberal bias, but the stupidity of the media is continually exposing itself more and more by their continued hatred of Sarah Palin. They are desperate to make her look stupid and unlearned, and yet at every turn she outsmarts them. It’s almost as if she is purposefully setting them up to get egg smeared on their face.

Personally, I don’t know what to think of her politics, but her road trip/campaign/vacation/appearance tour or whatever you want to call it is making a mockery out of the MSM and I love it. On this, she has my full support.

Oh and those recently released emails that the media were trying to whip up excitement and negative turmoil over…  Turns out that they are focused, shows her as hard working and show she is pretty dang smart… A lot of people are taking a second look at Sarah realizing they were had by the liberal media.

CBS Says:  Palin Is a Seasoned Executive – More Than Qualified To Be President

Run Sarah Run!

Newsweek: Rush Limbaugh: Establishment GOP and Dems Both Fear Palin

Related:

Palin: Let’s Roll… Will it Be All the Way to the White House?

Palin’s Secret Weapon: New Film to Premiere in June

The 2012 Election is the GOP’s to Lose

Long Lost Sarah Palin Surfaces From Released Emails (Victoriously)

Palin's Secret Weapon: New Film to Premiere in June

Just when they thought they had destroyed her for good comes this…  An epic Sarah Palin documentary will premiere next month… In Iowa.

Real Clear Politics reported last night on a new Sarah Palin film that will be releases next month in Iowa.

By Scott Conroy

Shortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request. Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin’s governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.

The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He’d make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself — to the tune of $1 million.

The fruits of that initial conversation are now complete. The result is a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut of which Bannon screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, where Alaska’s most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home. When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin’s prospective presidential campaign — an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won’t run.

Bannon, a former naval officer and ex-Goldman Sachs banker, sees his documentary as the first step in Palin’s effort to rebuild her image in the eyes of voters who may have soured on her, yet might reconsider if old caricatures begin to fade. The film will also appeal to staunch Palin supporters who have long celebrated her biting rhetoric and conservative populism yet know little about her record in Alaska and have perhaps written her off as presidential material.

“This film is a call to action for a campaign like 1976: Reagan vs. the establishment,” Bannon told RealClearPolitics. “Let’s have a good old-fashioned brouhaha.”

RealClearPolitics was recently given an exclusive screening of a rough cut of the now finished film, which Bannon designed, in part, to help catapult Palin from the presidential afterthought she has become in the eyes of many pundits directly to the front lines of the 2012 GOP conversation.

Palin initially learned about Bannon's work after she saw one of his previous films about the origins of the tea party movement, "Generation Zero," which premiered last year in Nashville and was later aired in prime time on the Fox News Channel. Impressed, Palin promoted "Generation Zero" via Twitter before later reaching out to Bannon about creating something to highlight her record in Alaska, where her performance in office was overshadowed by her resignation eight months after the 2008 presidential election.

Though she did not have any editorial role in the project, Palin facilitated access for Bannon and his film crew to key Alaskan defenders who were involved with the major achievements of her administration, and the filmmaker spent several weeks in the 49th state gathering archival film and conducting research and interviews for the project. He and his team took extraordinary measures to keep their endeavor secret.

When they requested from Alaska's TV news stations footage that was shot during Palin's political rise, they asked for additional tapes containing subject matters that were irrelevant to their project, in order not to raise suspicions. And rather than staying at the well-appointed Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, they instead took up temporary residence in low-key motels.

"We shot on the weekends, and we shot in locations that weren't being used during those weekends," Bannon said. "I did it with a handpicked crew of people I know and trust, and we were able to stay under the radar. The planning for the secrecy of this took many, many weeks."

Bannon originally titled his film "Take a Stand," which was the campaign slogan for Palin's 2006 gubernatorial run when she defeated incumbent Republican Frank Murkowski in the primary before cruising in the general election to become Alaska's youngest -- and first female -- chief executive. But in order to give it a more triumphant punch, the filmmaker changed the title to "The Undefeated."

Bannon acquired the audio rights to Palin's 2009 bestseller, "Going Rogue," and the former vice-presidential nominee's voice guides the film through the various stages of her career in Alaska.

Although Palin is not interviewed directly, the film features on-camera interviews and commentaries from 10 Alaskans who played different roles in her political rise, as well as six Lower 48 denizens who defend her in more visceral terms, including prominent conservative firebrands Mark Levin, Andrew Breitbart and Tammy Bruce.

Divided into three acts, the film makes the case that despite the now cliched label, Palin was indeed a maverick who confronted the powerful forces lined up against her to achieve wide-ranging success in a short period of time. The second part of the film's message is just as clear, if more subjective: that Sarah Palin is the only conservative leader who can both build on the legacy of the Reagan Revolution and bring the ideals of the tea party movement to the Oval Office.

Rife with religious metaphor and unmistakable allusions to Palin as a Joan of Arc-like figure, "The Undefeated" echoes Palin's "Going Rogue" in its tidy division of the world between the heroes who are on her side and the villains who seek to thwart her at every turn.

To convey Bannon's view of the pathology behind Palin-hatred, the film begins with a fast-paced sequence of clips showing some of the prominent celebrities who have used sexist, derogatory and generally vicious language to describe her.

Rosie O'Donnell, Matt Damon, Bill Maher, David Letterman, and Howard Stern all have brief cameos before comedian Louis C.K. goes off on a particularly ugly anti-Palin riff.

"I hate her more than anybody," C.K. says at the end of his tirade, the rest of which is unfit to print here.

Bannon intends to release two versions of the film. An unrated edition will contain some obscene anti-Palin language and imagery, while the other is targeted to a general audience and will seek a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

The Making of a Politician

After a brief interlude featuring some old Palin family home video footage, Act 1 begins with Sarah as narrator, recalling the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, when she was a young pregnant wife married to a blue-collar husband working on the North Slope.

"I hadn't yet envisioned running for elected office," Palin says in the audio taken from "Going Rogue," as images of the environmental disaster unfold on the screen. "But looking back, I could see that tragedy planted a seed in me. If I ever had a chance to serve my fellow citizens, I would do so."

Over the next hour, the crux of the narrative is taken over by Palin's Alaska backers, with former spokesperson Meg Stapleton and attorney Tom Van Flein leading the charge. Other more unfamiliar faces who uphold Palin's Alaska legacy include former Wasilla Deputy Mayor Judy Patrick, former gas pipeline adviser Marty Rutherford, longtime confidantes Kristan Cole and Judy Patrick, and former state Sen. Gene Therriault -- one of the few Alaska legislators who has remained vocal and consistent in his praise of Palin.

The recounting of Palin's earliest years in public office relies on a treasure trove of rare and never-before-seen video obtained by Bannon, including shots of Palin breaking ground on a construction project with her fellow Wasilla City Councilors, waving signs for her mayoral reelection campaign, and reacting acidly to a comment made by John Stein -- her predecessor in the mayor's office and one of the film's villains, who compared her to a "Spice Girl."

As the documentary transitions to Palin's ascent to statewide office, it dramatizes the culture of corruption that permeated Alaska, with images of fat men smoking cigars in dark rooms and the infamous Suite 604 at the Baranof Hotel in Juneau, where the FBI secretly videotaped executives of the oil services company VECO in a corruption scandal that would shake the foundations of Alaska government just as Palin was making a name for herself as an ethics crusader.

"The Undefeated" conveys the dramatic extent to which Palin's world has changed in just a few years, as it shows her announcing her gubernatorial campaign not at a massive rally but at a sparsely attended press conference in her kitchen. Those unfamiliar with Palin's political background will be surprised to learn that the woman who has become one of the nation's most boisterous press critics was once such a media darling that two of the Alaska TV news correspondents whose highly favorable reports are shown in the film ended up leaving their jobs to join the Palin administration.

Palin's charisma has in recent years often been overshadowed by the more unforgiving side of her personality, but one scene from the film illustrates how she has long used her personal charm to disarm and discombobulate her competitors.

"Oh, this will be fun," Palin says to her soon-to-be vanquished Democratic gubernatorial opponent, Tony Knowles, during a brief encounter in Anchorage on primary night in 2006. Knowles remains speechless, while Palin smiles and adds an "Oh, golly" for good measure.

Mining the ‘Maverick' Label

Palin's stint as a hard-charging reformer in Juneau won her approval ratings that consistently topped 80 percent and made her the most popular governor in America, catching the eye of the McCain campaign. It was the "maverick" label that piqued McCain's interest in 2008 -- far more than Palin's supposed purity on social issues -- just as it does the filmmaker's.

The movie focuses on Palin's triumphs on fiscal and energy matters, while ignoring hot-button topics like abortion. Indeed, although she was always identified as a staunch social conservative, Palin often worked more closely with Democrats than Republicans in Juneau and largely avoided ideological fights during her first two years in office.

Yet Palin the Fighter is an ever-present theme in the documentary; one of its most memorable moments occurs when Meg Stapleton recalls an encounter at the Fairbanks airport when Palin literally stared down an oil executive who told her, "You don't know who you're messing with."

The film's third act puts a positive spin on Palin's 2008 vice presidential run, reminding viewers of her initially valuable impact on the McCain campaign by showing the Gallup poll trend lines that had the Republican ticket taking its first lead over the Democrats before the collapse of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15.

It also gives an extended treatment to Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., her finest hour politically.

"The Undefeated" eschews less flattering topics, such as the Troopergate saga -- which had little effect on the VP campaign but left a lastingly negative impression of Palin in the eyes of many Alaskans -- and her unimpressive series of interviews with Katie Couric.

Bannon dramatizes the theme of Palin's persecution at the hands of her enemies in the media and both political parties, a notion the former governor has long embraced. Images of lions killing a zebra and a dead medieval soldier with an arrow sticking in his back dramatize the ethics complaints filed by obscure Alaskan citizens, which Palin has cited as the primary reason for her sudden resignation in July of 2009.

Fighting Words

The film's coda is introduced with an on-screen caption that reads, "From here, I can see November." It is here that Mark Levin alludes to Ronald Reagan as a Palin-like insurgent who was also once distrusted by the GOP establishment.

Palin is then shown firing up a rally that occurred just last month on the steps of the state capitol in Wisconsin. "What we need is for you to stand up, GOP, and fight," Palin, in vintage campaign form, shouts to the crowd. "Maybe I should ask some of the Badger women's hockey team -- those champions -- maybe I should ask them if we should be suggesting to GOP leaders they need to learn how to fight like a girl!"

Following an extended in-your-face riff by Andrew Breitbart in which he repeatedly denounces as "eunuchs" the male Republican leaders who decline to defend Palin, the film ends with one last scene from the April rally in Madison: "Mr. President, game on!" Palin shouts before a martial drumbeat ushers in a closing quotation by Thomas Paine, which also appeared in "Going Rogue." The implication is neither subtle nor easy to dismiss.

In a telling sign of how the film's message has already resonated with her own thought process, Palin made reference to the Paine quotation during an appearance on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show last week shortly after she viewed a rough cut of the film for the first time.

"It's like Thomas Paine said, Greta, one of our founders. He said, ‘If there be trouble, let it be in my day that my child may have peace,'" Palin said. "I think of that when I consider whether running for office or not."

SarahPAC's treasurer Tim Crawford confirmed that "The Undefeated" was a hit with Palin.

"The governor thought it was great," Crawford said.

Bannon's film also resonated with members of Palin's staff, including Mansour.

"I'm a huge fan of Steve's work," Mansour said in a statement to RCP on Tuesday. "His film on President Reagan, ‘In the Face of Evil,' is my favorite documentary, and his ‘Generation Zero' was a rallying cry for the Tea Party movement early on. I think his new film really captures the essence of Governor Palin's stewardship of Alaska, and I think people will be really surprised by it. It shatters so many false stereotypes because it shows what she actually accomplished as governor. You can't leave it thinking the same way about Sarah Palin."

In the last couple of months, Palin has delivered major policy speeches, hired a chief of staff, made a well-publicized foreign trip that included a visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, all the while remaining consistent about her vow -- first made just days after the 2008 campaign ended -- that she would "crash through" any of the "open doors" that might lead to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Bannon intends to premiere the film in Iowa late next month before expanding the release to New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. After the initial rollout in the four early voting states, the filmmaker will eventually release it to somewhere between 50 and 100 markets nationwide.

Palin aides have not yet decided whether the former governor will play an active role in the film's premiere, but there has been some preliminary discussion of purchasing copies of the film from Bannon to distribute as gifts to SarahPAC donors.

Bannon is also working out a video-on-demand deal that will make the movie more widely accessible.

Palin has been tight-lipped about which way she is leaning in regard to running for president next year, but her team of advisers is operating under the notion that they are laying the groundwork for a future campaign, until they are told otherwise.

Palin's future presidential bid might be based in the Phoenix area -- where Bristol Palin also recently purchased a new home -- but Palin's aides have yet to reach out to potential venues for a campaign headquarters in Arizona.

Despite Palin's apparent desire to wait as long as possible before making her decision, aides acknowledge that they will soon have to establish a more campaign-like operation in order to begin a more concerted effort to raise money and take other steps that would be required -- even for a potential candidate as unconventional as Palin.

Meanwhile, the news about Palin's initial effort to commission a film project to highlight her political record is sure to put additional pressure on Fox News to demand an answer from one of their star contributors on whether she intends to run for president or continue working as a political analyst on the network that may soon find itself reporting on her campaign.

Palin and her aides have appeared to recognize that despite some recent polls showing her near the top of the prospective Republican field, she still has substantial problems with independent voters and large swaths of the GOP. Even more daunting will be finding a way to explain persuasively just how it was that ethics complainers and liberal bloggers -- whom other politicians in her shoes might have largely dismissed as relatively minor nuisances -- succeeded in forcing her out of office.

But coming on the heels of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's decision not to join the fray, many grassroots conservatives are clamoring for a candidate who has both the stature and the sizzle to compete with President Obama.

If she does decide to run, "The Undefeated" will be the key element to her initial coming-out party. The film's impending release -- and the frenzied media attention that it is sure to generate -- will serve as a vivid wake-up call that despite the many obstacles in front of her, Palin's entry into the race would turn the campaign on its head in an instant, just as it did in 2008.

As she mulls her decision in the coming weeks, the other Republican candidates in the field will be left to prepare for a hibernating grizzly who appears poised to rise up once again.

Scott Conroy is a national political reporter for RealClearPolitics. He can be reached at sconroy@realclearpolitics.com.

Related:

The 2012 Election is the GOP’s to Lose

One thing you can bet on is that creeps and leftist Media Matter sponsored minions will continue to attach Sarah Palin if she runs and if she doesn’t.  The last two nights Sean Hannity has had clips of his interview with former Palin staffer, Frank Bailey, who worked for her for years and now that his has a book deal and is probably getting paid by Soros (indirectly) has written a new so-called tell-all trashing his former boss and friend.  Sean Hannity did a great job giving him what for and we need to do exactly the same thing by keeping and open mind and really considering the source of these types of attacks.  Video:  Hannity Challenges Author of Sarah Palin Tell-All – part 1

America by Heart

Meet Your Next President

Written by Jim Funkhouser Apr 18, 2011

Sarah Palin

Yesterday, after a short political sabbatical, I cautiously dipped my toe back into the boiling porridge that now passes for public discourse. Drudge is always first, and it was there that I discovered that Palin had finally made it official: She’s running.

Was there ever a doubt? Talk about anti-climatic.

The big question in my mind was always this: Can she win? Her speech in Wisconsin answered that question for me. Sarah Barracuda’s reemergence finds her in full campaign mode and she is startlingly better than ever before. I know how Chris Matthews feels now.

Could Pawlenty, Gingrich, or Romney have generated the energy and sense of urgency that Palin so effortlessly brought forth? The mind struggles to animate them with such authenticity, and the reason might be obvious: There is always the nagging doubt that they are true believers.

It’s easy for Sarah because she believes everything she says. Her sound conservative agenda is not a political design, it’s an expression of core values, and the passion that issues forth is so genuine that it never occurs to a single person in the audience, on the left or the right, that she is anything other than what she appears to be.

Palin is kryptonite to the Loony-Left and the RINO-right precisely because they all know that she is serious. Does the Left fear Gingrich? Hardly. Any chance that Romney will roll back the welfare state? Puh-lease. Is Tea-Paw (Pawlenty) going to ride into the Beltway and run rough-shod over the Statists? He would struggle to find a Veep with less gravitas. They will all be ignored… until they are nominated.

To gauge the threat measure the heat, and Palin has be hotly scrutinized more than any other politician in history. Her travails with the punditry, mainstream media, and the establishment at every level seems to be remarkably unbalanced… until you calculate two things.

1. Her influence. Romney could release a thousand page theses tomorrow that rivals the Federalist Papers and it would be trumped if Palin tweeted about Michelle’s garden. Is that fair? Nope. But it’s reality. When Sarah speaks, people listen, and everyone knows it.

2. Her spine. Fight like a girl nailed it. The uber-Mama Grizzly is the real deal. Boehner cries because he thinks his navel is the center of the universe. A mother with a child that has Down’s-syndrome knows that politics doesn’t even make the top ten when you list reasons to get emotional. She won’t cry when she’s being sworn in, trust me.

Sarah’s courage is her defining attribute. She has endured a withering assault and is stronger than ever because she has faced it without blinking. The Primary Season may hold surprises, but Palin has already been battle-tested like no other politician in history and I doubt that anyone will be pulling a secret rough-draft Alaskan version of Romney-care out of her closet anytime soon.

America doesn’t need a Republican version of Obama solutionism, it needs a female version of Ronald Reagan conservatism. She will be the default Republican choice for that reason alone. Her flaws are not flaws of character or ideology, and in the end people don’t choose a candidate because they think that Lexington and Concord are in New Hampshire, or that America has 57 States. People choose because they trust.

De Tocqueville knew it was true about America, and I know it’s true about Palin. Sarah is great because Sarah is good. We’ve tried everything else, let’s try honest government again… this time in heels.

The Tea Party Tribune

SarahPac Launches new site: http://www.sarahpac.com/

Palin Quits as Alaska Governor

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday that she is stepping down at the end of the month, setting up a potential run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin shocked the political word Friday by announcing that she will step down at the end of the month and transfer power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

Palin made the surprise announcement from her home in Wasilla, flanked by her husband, Todd, and family and state commissioners.

"I never believed that I nor anyone else needs a title to do this, to make a difference," she said. "I'm determined to take the right path for Alaska, even though it is unconventional and it's not so comfortable."

Parnell will be inaugurated at the governor's picnic in Fairbanks at the end of the month, Palin said.

The announcement came on the same week that one of her top public health officials says she was forced out of office because Palin felt she wasn't in step on social issues.

Palin's decision now allows her to avoid the difficult task of running for president while serving as governor.

Todd Palin told FOX News that his wife will concentrate on "doing the things for Alaska and the country" that she is passionate about and can not do as governor with the limitation and constant opposition she deals with within the state.

Palin, who defeated incumbent Gov. Murkowski in a primary in 2006, gained national prominence when GOP presidential candidate John McCain picked her as his running mate last year. But her approval ratings in the state have skidded in recent months.

Palin has been dogged in recent months by ethics inquiries. Her office last month announced the 15th dismissal of an ethics complaint against her or one of her staff.

On Wednesday, Beverly Wooley, who has worked more than 20 years in public health in Alaska, most of it with the municipality of Anchorage, ended her stint as state public health director.

She's the second top health official to leave within days. The state's chief medical officer, Jay Butler, left in late June after declining to take on Wooley's job along with his own. He now is in Atlanta, overseeing a U.S. Centers for Disease Control task force on a vaccine to protect against the H1N1 flu virus.

FOX News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Sarah PAC Update

As Washington, D.C. partisans continue to fight and bicker over "politics as usual," Governor Sarah Palin is working every day to reform government in Alaska and fight for the conservative values we all cherish.

It's been a busy few weeks for Governor Palin. Like many Americans, the Governor is praying for the many families in Alaska that are struggling in a difficult economy. Not content with waiting for the federal government to sort through the mess, Governor Palin is working each day to restore Alaska's economy and put people back to work. That's why she recently proposed legislation that will provide relief for Alaskans struggling to heat their homes and generate the power they need.

Recently, Governor Palin was joined by Franklin Graham as she traveled to Western Alaska. Together, Governor Palin and Mr. Graham toured the region and met with residents of the area. Many of these Alaskans have recently received additional assistance through a partnership between many state agencies and several faith-based, non-profit groups, such as Mr. Graham's Samaritan's Purse.

As you can see, Governor Palin is working each day in Alaska. Her bold actions have helped thousands across the state and is the example of strong, conservative leadership needed throughout the country.
SarahPAC supports leaders and candidates that share Governor Palin's vision of government reform, low taxes, and personal freedom. Governor Palin will soon be traveling the country and working to support leaders who share this vision.

But we can't do it without you. Will you join Governor Palin's team and make a contribution so SarahPAC - the official Sarah Palin PAC - can support the Governor's efforts to reform government and help elect leaders who share our conservative values?

Thank you for being a part of our team. Governor Palin believes our brightest days are ahead and she is honored to have you by her side.

Sincerely,

P.S. SarahPAC supports leaders and candidates who share Governor Palin's vision of government reform, low taxes, and personal freedom. Your contribution today will help SarahPAC support Governor Palin's efforts to reform government and help elect leaders who share our conservative values.