Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Suggesting that Sarah Palin's recent tour of historic sites was anything but a low-cost family get-away, Rep. Earl Blumenauer on Tuesday asked the National Park Service if it extended extra services to a private citizen. He also demanded that Palin should reimburse the government any additional cost caused by her high-profile visits to Gettysburg, Independence Hall, Fort McHenry and other iconic sites on a swing along the Northeast last week. "I am writing with serious concerns about the use of federal resources in conjunction with the 'One Nation' partisan political tour conducted by former Gov. Sarah Palin," Blumenauer...

Sometimes there is a line that is crossed between what appropriate for comedy and what’s likely off limits. But did comic Christopher Titus cross that line? In an appearance on Monday’s “The Adam Carolla Show” podcast, Titus may have waded into that territory. In responding to a question about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” in which Palin defended her interpretation of what happened during Paul Revere’s pre-Revolutionary War famous ride, Titus launched into a description of what he would do if Palin were elected. “You know what man?” Titus said. “I am going to literally...

CNN asked me to write an opinion piece on how a Sarah Palin campaign — or lack of one — would impact the Republican nomination race. Instead of hitting that directly, I decided to write an analysis of what Palin has accomplished with her bus tour and how it will impact the race regardless of whether she decides to run in 2012 at all, and CNN graciously published it this morning: The media turned Palin’s bus tour into a celebrity chase, instead of covering it as a political event. As a political event, Palin’s travelogues show that it’s been pretty...

Everyone has already had a grand old time mocking this video of Sarah Palin bungling her Paul Revere history, but I actually think it amounts to quite an eloquent statement. It’s as eloquent an argument as anyone could make that this woman really should not be treated by any of us as anything resembling a presidential candidate until it’s absolutely necessary — which is to say, until she actually runs for president.

Some media commentary on Sarah Palin continues to amuse me quite a bit. There are those who love to talk about how irrelevant she is — usually in the midst of a lengthy blog post or column that obsesses about something Palin recently said or tweeted. There are those who continue to distort her record, despite the surplus her policies afforded Alaska and a list of accomplishments that includes substantial spending reductions, incentivizing and expanding drilling for oil and natural gas, investing in state savings, and a commitment to transparency, ethics reform, and tackling corruption. And there are an array...

<p>The last time members of the political establishment and media commentators seriously grappled with the question posed by my title occurred in the weeks following Senator John McCain’s seemingly mercurial and impulsive selection of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Many would say that doubts about the intellectual and leadership fortitude of Ms. Palin as a possible successor to an elderly and illness-prone Senator McCain, had he prevailed in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, was a leading factor in persuading many independent voters, and even some Republicans, to cast their votes for Barack Obama.</p>

I admit there were doubts in those early days about whether I could make it through all of February without invoking her name. The tremors and sweats were manageable. But I couldn't overcome an abiding terror: What if Sarah Palin announced her presidential bid, right in the middle of my self-imposed, month-long moratorium? The turning point came when I watched Fox News on Feb. 11. A banner flashed on the screen: "FOX NEWS ALERT." Dramatic music played. Stuart Varney, in for Neil Cavuto, delivered the bulletin: "Sarah Palin has issued a tweet." This was news? It was then that I...

This article is not about endorsing Sarah Palin for president. It is about illustrating the liberal media's ability to brand an image. Case in point, conservatives saying Palin is not smart enough to be president. The Left launched their "Sarah Palin is Stupid" campaign the next day after her incredible VP nomination acceptance speech. A woman, pretty, smart, witty, confident and bold with an ability to inspire and fire up the conservative base, Sarah Palin was the Left's worst nightmare. They were livid. The only thing which could have made it worse would have been if Palin was black. The...

Sarah Palin continues to be a repository for the Left's paranoia. Ever since her arrival in St. Paul,Minnesota the self-motivated, good-looking, charismatic, conservative Governor has been subjected to all-consuming assaults coming from both genders and both parties. The carnivalistic orgy of insults and torrent of false accusations have not abated, despite the general consensus that she is "unelectable." While Palin's gender automatically makes her vulnerable in the race for the White House, (no female has ever been elected President or Vice-President), there's some deeper unknown that turned normal curiosity about an unknown candidate in 2008 into full-blown rage.

Sarah Palin's favorite word in describing America is "exceptional." She uses the term in her book "America by Heart" as it relates to Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who traveled through the United States in the early 1830s. Tocqueville was sent to America in 1831 by the new French king Louis-Phillipe of Orleans to study the prison system. Instead, Tocqueville ended up taking notes on every aspect of American life, society and government during his nine month sojourn in North America. The French philosopher predicted many things in his book "Democracy in America" -- slavery splitting the nation, religious fervor...

Take Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee out of the 2012 presidential mix, says Al Cardenas, new chair of the American Conservative Union: If they were serious about running, "they'd probably be here." Interviewed at the end of the second busy day of his organization's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Cardenas dismissed the chances of the two high-profile no-shows. "Both Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin would be formidable contenders, but are unlikely to be nominees," he told On Calll. "But my sense I they're not serious about running because I would think they'd probably be here if they were."

The desperation is palpable. The Beltway Gang have now officially floated every conceivable presidential candidate this side of Rich Lowry’s cat.

She’s pro-freedom, she’s pro-life, she’s anti-illegal immigration, she gets up liberals’ noses, both in the States and over here, she’s a self-made mother of five who worked her way up and shoots from the hip. So why doesn’t Sarah Palin do it for so many British conservatives? It’s not just her tendency towards the odd gaffe, whether it be her Shakespearean coinage of new words or her misunderstanding of what “blood libel” means; Obama makes just as many gaffes, as will anyone in the spotlight. But for some reason they don’t get mentioned on the BBC. Perhaps it’s just her...

The White House won’t take the bait on Sarah’s Palin’s latest criticism, in which she said President Obama’s response to the crisis is Egypt was like a 3 a.m. phone call that was ignored. “This is that 3 a.m. White House phone call,” Palin said on CBN’s The Brody File, reviving an image from the 2008 campaign. “It seems that that call went right to the answering machine, and nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know ... and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the...

No great surprise here, really; Palin has quietly backed the end of DADT and expressed support for conservative gays and lesbians in the past. Speaking here with David Brody from the Christian Broadcast Network and excerpted by Breitbart TV, Palin doesn’t endorse GOProud but does defend their attendance at CPAC, and argues that the value of events such as CPAC is to debate the issues and provide as much information as possible to attendees:

I saw this video over on Conservatives4Palin And one minute into it, I had to share it. Enjoy. (VIDEO AT LINK) The very sound of her name provokes reactions that run from reverence to loathing. She has become for better or worse a hopeless tangle of causes and effects. Here is a woman who carries all the symbolic freight of America’s culture war. It has become her fate to symbolize everything that some people like, and others detest about this country’s red states. Sarah Palin has been criticized not only for her record and positions but for her intelligence, her...

Last Spring in New Orleans, Jonathan Martin and I picked up a very clear sentiment from Republican activists about Sarah Palin, reporting from the Southern Republican Leadership conference that "the wide admiration for Palin among the rock-ribbed Dixie Republicans gathered in the room wasn't matched by a confidence that she was ready to run." Jeff Zeleny picks up something very similar at the Reagan Library this weekend: Roy Billings, a Reagan admirer and a longtime contributor to the [Young America's Foundation], said he liked Ms. Palin a great deal, but he hoped that she would not run for president in...

As my colleague Janet Daley notes, ConservativeHome USA has declared war on Sarah Palin, rounding up US conservatives who think she’d be a disaster as the next Republican presidential candidate. What I find strange, however, is the way it’s gone about it. In a piece signed by “The Editors”, ConHomeUSA has awarded anti-Palin Republicans the melodramatic title of “Truth Tellers”. And, rather bizarrely, it is recruiting for more: If you are a Truth Teller, or want to recommend a commentator who is, email us here. Don’t get me wrong. I think Sarah Palin is basically nuts, as I suggested when...

Palinoia strikes deep. Into DU it will freep. . . . Yes, every day of the month the moonbats suffer from PMS (Palin Madness Syndrome). It causes the DUmmies to believe just about anything--anything bad--about Sarah Palin. Thus they will fall for even an obvious piece of satire written about Mama Grizzly, thinking it is true. That's what happened the other day in DUmmieland. It started when the media guy the DUmmies most look up to, Rachel Mancow, read a portion of an article about Mooselini preparing to invade Egypt--a satirical piece--and Rachel thought it was true! And so...

The most entertaining segment of Hardball the past few nights has been watching host Chris Matthews consistently seethe at the mere mention of the name Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. And with Sarah Palin’s “WTF” moment, she too has re-entered Matthews’ zone of contempt, a place where Matthews seriously serves up an endless supply of eye-catching insults. For the past few days, after a clip of Bachmann played, smoke would nearly come out of Matthews’ ears as he then proceeded to mock her as a “balloon-head,” yelled at Tea Party leaders for refusing to admit she’s ignorant, or worried she might lack...