SARAH PALIN TO ATTEND PREMIERE OF THE UNDEFEATED AT PELLA OPERA HOUSE IN IOWA

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (June 25, 2011)– Victory Film Group VictoryFilmGroup.com and ARC Entertainment announced today that Governor Sarah Palin and her husband Todd will attend the premiere of The Undefeated at the historic Pella Opera House on Tuesday June 28 at 5pm Central Time in Pella, Iowa. Immediately after the showing, Victory Film Group and ARC Entertainment will host a traditional Iowa cookout to thank the Pella Opera House and the people of Pella.

In accepting the invitation to attend the premiere, Sarah Palin stated, “We are very excited to visit historic Pella and its opera house and look forward to seeing the finished film for the first time with fellow Americans from the heartland.”

Responding to the Palin’s announcement that they will attend the Iowa premiere, Larry Peterson, Chairman of the Board of the Pella Opera House said, “We look forward to hosting Governor Palin and her husband, Todd, at our beloved opera house as we welcome them to our community.”

“We are incredibly excited about Governor Palin and her husband Todd’s attendance at a location that speaks to the basic core values of The Undefeated,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the writer and director of the film.

“We are delighted that Governor Palin and her husband Todd have accepted our invitation to join us at the Iowa premiere of what we believe is a truly moving and extraordinary film,” said Trevor Drinkwater, CEO of ARC Entertainment, the film’s worldwide distributor.

The film begins its national rollout exclusively in AMC Theatres in 10 cities the week of July 15th. The film will debut in Dallas, Denver, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Atlanta, Orange County, Phoenix, Houston, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, with plans to take it nationwide in additional markets thereafter.

The Undefeated features leading prominent political commentators Mark Levin, Tammy Bruce and Andrew Breitbart as well as conservative activists Kate Obenshein, Sonnie Johnson and Jamie Radtke. Additionally, the film features interviews with Alaskan civil servants, elected officials and advisors who were involved in Alaskan politics during Governor Palin’s tenure.

The Undefeated, which was written and directed by Stephen K. Bannon and produced by Bannon and Victory Film Group co-founder Glenn Bracken Evans and Dan Fleuette, chronicles Sarah Palin’s rise from obscurity to national prominence.

Those who don't understand the role of the Dutch Reformed in Iowa may not immediately recognize some additional factors here in the timing and placement of this event by Sarah Palin.

Pella is the original center of the Dutch immigration to Iowa, and it's much closer to major statewide media (i.e., the Des Moines Register and Des Moines TV stations) than a similar event would be in other key Dutch Reformed communities such as Orange City or Sioux Center. In the parts of Iowa that the Dutch Reformed dominate, they have a far greater influence than Southern Baptists have in places like Alabama or Georgia — and those places tend to be among the most strongly Republican parts of the whole state of Iowa. I think this is a clear effort by Palin to present herself as the conservative Christian candidate for a constituency that can do her a great deal of good, but which will need some serious convincing due to the unfortunate issues with her daughter's pregnancy, as well as due to her Pentecostal theology.

While the two main Dutch Reformed denominations, the Christian Reformed Church and Reformed Church in America, have both lost their battles with liberalism on the national level, that definitely is **NOT** true in Iowa. People who are theologically moderate or even liberal by CRC or RCA standards tend to be pretty conservative on political issues. I personally know some Christian Reformed women elders who take strongly conservative stands on abortion, homosexuality, and the other hot-button concerns of Christian conservatives despite being considered out-and-out liberals by the standards of the CRC. Let's just say that with a strong history of women's activism in both conservative and liberal churches (think of the roles of Dutch Reformed conservative women like Laurie Vanden Heuvel, a key opponent of the ERA ratification in Iowa, as well as Gertrude Hoeksema and Fredrika Pronk in their own smaller denominations), there won't be any bias against Palin's gender, and perhaps even some strong advocacy of putting a conservative woman into political power.

The Dutch Reformed have a strong history of aggressive involvement in the political sphere dating back to Abraham Kuyper, a prime minister of the Netherlands who also founded a Christian university, a Christian newspaper, and a denomination which rapidly became the second-largest Protestant church in the Netherlands. Their immigrant heirs have well over a century of aggressive Christian engagement in American secular politics — one which long predates the modern Christian conservative movement.

However, to say the Dutch have a tendency toward being insular and clannish is an understatement. (Don't get the Vandersomethings together to shoot me — I grew up in Grand Rapids, I'm a Calvin College graduate, and I know what I'm talking about.) For an outsider to gain the trust of the Dutch Reformed, that outsider needs to begin early and work hard to convince lots of tall blond Dutchmen that a pretty Pentecostal from Alaska with family troubles is a good candidate. It's definitely not impossible, but it will be challenging — the Dutch, unlike some parts of American evangelicalism, are not known for their willingness to be forgiving of moral issues in the home. I know people who only two generations ago were ordered by their parents to wear black wedding dresses when premarital sexual relations resulted in a “forced marriage.”

On the other hand, once the Dutch Reformed are convinced that somebody is a good candidate, they'll work double overtime for that candidate, and in Republican caucuses in Iowa, delivering Pella and Northwest Iowa is a major step towards victory.

I wouldn't be surprised if somebody tries to get a photo of Sarah Palin in wooden shoes carrying tulips during a Tulip Time parade. There are better ways to win the Dutch vote — memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism might be a good start, or at least understanding the applicability of Q&A 1 to the life of any Bible-believing Christian regardless of denomination.

However, I think Palin’s handlers understand the importance of the Dutch vote in Republican Party politics in Iowa — especially in the conservative Christian wing — and this Pella event is intended to help introduce her to that constituency. Palin’s views of Christian political activism are not those of Abraham Kuyper, but I can't think of very many other candidates in the race who stand a serious chance of getting strong support from the Dutch Reformed as an organized constituency.

Of course, I have no inside knowledge and could easily be wrong. But if Palin or her handlers didn't plan this deliberately, they sure got lucky and hit on a really good idea by accident.

In the for-whatever-it’s-worth category, I’ve got my own concerns about Sarah Palin. I’m still undecided — my candidate was Mike Huckabee — though I like a lot of what I see from Palin.

I’ll probably end up supporting whoever ends up being the conservative social issues candidate most likely to be able to defeat Obama. So far, that part of the Republican field looks like it’s going to end up being mostly Palin and Bachman, though I’d like to hear more about Cain, and in any case I hope Christian conservative voters don’t divide their support so much that somebody else wins.

None of those three have the amount of experience I’d like to see, but neither did George W. Bush. I really wish Huckabee or someone else who is a social issues conservative with a long history in a governorship were running — significant executive experience means a lot to me — but that’s probably not going to happen. I just hope that if Palin, Bachman or Cain becomes the nominee, they assemble a very good team of very experienced people to give them the knowledge they need to run effectively and then to govern effectively.

unseen1 posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 8:18:48 PM “Palin doesn’t have handlers.”

No offense intended... sincere apologies. I grew up in a political family and I meant that as a neutral term.

Nobody can possibly know everything about how to run an effective campaign in a thousand counties all over the United States, and I'm guessing that whoever is advising Palin on Iowa Republican politics is giving her a lot of good advice on how to reach conservative Christian voters. In Iowa, a big part of that involves the Dutch.

HereInTheHeartland posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 8:22:33 PM: “You may be right, but I think you are over analyzing this. But everything you said is true...”

Fair point. This **IS** Sarah Palin, after all, who I think trusts her gut and her instincts more than detailed analysis. That is both a strength and a weakness for a candidate.

But as I said, even if Palin and her campaign staff (is that better than “handlers”) didn't plan this deliberately, they sure got lucky and hit on a really good idea by accident.

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