Free Republic

Since Palin put the GOP on notice yesterday and followed up with a tweet to Marco Rubio about the congratulatory call he received from Barack Obama on his ability to ram an amnesty bill, the usual suspects are jumping on her. Many tweeted a Hot Air article from 2008 that stated she supported a "path to citizenship." On whether or not to deport the millions already here, she said: There is no way that in the US we would roundup every illegal immigrant -there are about 12 million of the illegal immigrants- not only economically is that just an impossibility...

John Oliver began his second week guest-hosting The Daily Show welcoming Sarah Palin back to Fox News. Okay, maybe “welcoming” is a strong word. In fact, Oliver realized that rather than spending the whole show piling on every single folksy thing Palin says, he might as well just ignore her instead. Oliver first noted that Palin only left Fox News five months ago, and now she’s back, so “she has now effectively quit quitting!” He played clip after clip of Palin saying what she’s been up to, and he was ready to mock every single word that came out of...

Ms. Palin became a national celebrity after her unsuccessful 2008 vice presidential turned into a media career as a paid Fox News contributor from January 2010 to January of this year. The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Ms. Palin wouldn't be renewing her contract with the cable news networking, citing a person familiar with the matter. "I've had several conversations with Governor Palin in the past few weeks about her rejoining Fox News as a contributor," Mr. Ailes said Thursday. "I have great confidence in her and am pleased that she will once again add her commentary to...

Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren says she is “delighted” Sarah Palin is back as a Fox News contributor and that the former Republican vice presidential candidate will be “part of the national debate.” “I am delighted to have her back at Fox,” Van Susteren told POLITICO in an email. “She has a big impact (check out the number of Facebook followers! 3.5 million!) and should be part of the national debate.” And, Van Susteren noted, “It is free promo for Fox since it will drive her TV critics crazy! They are obsessed with her!”(continued)

Michele Bachmann's taking a bow. Sarah Palin's star has faded. With the brassy, blow-dried bombasts of the GOP moving to the sidelines, there's no elected heir apparent to inherit the mantle and carry the conservative crusade forward on the national stage. What does that mean for a Republican Party struggling to woo the women voters it needs to win national elections? It may be for the best, say some of the GOP operatives who have been pushing the party to rebrand itself after its 2012 losses. "They and their style gives short shrift to other women in the GOP," said...

A very persistent Republic High School senior with an odd fascination for Sarah Palin managed to convince the sassy caribou-skinning gal from Wasilla to bring her show – or what little is left of it – to the tiny Eastern Washington town of Republic. If you haven’t heard, Palin, whose boundless anti-intellectualism can still leave one breathless, will deliver the commencement address to the school’s graduating class of 26 on Saturday afternoon. Each graduate has been given 20 tickets to distribute, which should guarantee that the 700-person capacity gym will be pleasantly stuffed. Still, to a large extent, Palin’s visit...

Christopher “Kid” Reid of the old hip-hop duo Kid ‘n Play wasn’t the only one who noticed Sarah (and Todd) Palin at the Pacers-Heat basketball game Sunday night. After attending the Indy 500, the Palins sat courtside for game three of the Eastern Conference Finals in Indianapolis.

It is one thing to raise millions from grassroots activists or appear on record numbers of TV talk shows or give rhetorically charged speeches before adoring crowds – it is quite another to do the hard work of governing. Both Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin were political lightweights who were full of sound and fury and accomplished very little. Both quit their posts like spoiled children, after meteoric rises that had precious little to do with actually getting anything done. Both were bad examples of what public service should be all about and both exhibited a certain pathology steeped more...

The streams emerging from beneath an Arctic glacier are several degrees warmer than the icy water Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has tossed on a Tea Party group’s effort to draft former Gov. Sarah Palin as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2014. Reviving one of Alaska’s great political feuds, Murkowski told The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C.: “I think there are a lot of outside interests that would like to see Sarah Palin in some form of elected office. Most in Alaska recognize our former governor is rally not involved in or engaged in the state anymore, that she’s moved...

It is hard to admit that one of the most cartoonish and self-aggrandizing figures in recent political memory actually could have been a contender at one time, but I am now willing to cede that point. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin actually could have been, at the very least, a respected political figure over the course of the last decade, but she has squandered any capital or potential she may have had by being a rudderless buffoon. The only reason this comes to light again is because Palin is polling ahead of two other candidates for a potential open Senate...

It’s disturbing that Ann Coulter is so desperate for attention that she would stoop this low on the day Margaret Thatcher died. Just like Politco (as Steve pointed out in another post) Coulter used Thatcher’s passing as an opportunity to take part in some trashy PDS. During an interview with Geraldo Rivera, Coulter starting punching up and didn’t stop until she made a complete fool of herself.Transcript, courtesy of Real Clear Politics: COULTER: One thing that I know, because I know people who know her, is when Sarah Palin first burst on the scene, the political scene, she wanted to...

Last year, Sarah Palin made Marc Lamont Hill’s list of “15 Most Overrated White People.” And then he ran into her at an airport. Palin was very nice to me and kind to my daughter. Although we disagree on everything politically, I still appreciate that. After she walked away, I thought about all the things I've said about Palin over the past four years. Wondered if I would've been that nice.

Prominent among the clueless douchebags who thought Rudy Giuliani could be elected president, John Avlon by 2009 was faced with a problem: How could a pro-Obama liberal Republican hireling find work in a political environment where the Tea Party uprising demonstrated that the Charlie Crist collaborationist Vichy wing of the GOP had no natural grassroots constituency? So in 2010, Avlon co-founded the “No Labels” movement, funded by liberal donors and assigned the mission of helping Democrats destroy the Tea Party. And if Avlon’s constant smearing of conservatives as “winguts” damaged the Republican Party, so what? Nobody involved in “No Labels”...

She’s baaaack. Sarah Palin attempted to relaunch her political career and her political action committee, SarahPAC, on Thursday with a Web video called “Loaded for Bear,” which presented the former Alaska governor as the new kingmaker for conservative populists in the GOP. The video riffed off her speech at CPAC, in which Palin railed against “the big consultants, the big money men, and the big bad media.” But there’s an irony alert ahead: the current stated purpose of SarahPAC is to raise money ahead of the 2014 election—most of which will be spent on conservative consultants. Don't believe me? Well,...

You know, it’s curious that the more journalists and wise political pundits tell us how irrelevant Governor Sarah Palin is, the more attention she receives from these same bottom feeders in the form of shoddy and lazy drive-by hit pieces in the press and on television. The reason so many of these journalistic pursuits ring hollow in the face of, oh I don’t know, facts, is because the author/speaker isn’t adequately afflicted with Palin Derangement Syndrome, or PDS. As a public service, and believe me, this is a public service, as I’m expending time and energy for which I could...

Sarah Palin rocked a packed ballroom here at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday afternoon. The applause was roaring. The hollers many. The atmosphere crackling. In other words: Dog bites man. Palin's speech, if you can call it that, was Palin at her most Palinesque: heavy on one-liners and folksy charm; light on, you know, anything resembling substance and solutions. Here, a sampling of Palin's many zingers: "They talk about rebuilding the party. How about rebuilding the middle class?" "They talk about rebuilding the GOP? How about restoring the trust of the people?" "Let's be clear about...

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, the former campaign adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, has repeatedly argued that the Republican Party should be more inclusive — of almost everyone, it seems, except Sarah Palin. On Friday night’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during its online “Overtime” segment, Schmidt tersely responded to a viewer question about McCain’s selection of Palin to be his running mate: MAHER: Steve Schmidt, ‘Is it possible you picked Sarah Palin the wrong year?’ Oh, my. ‘Could she have swung the women vote in 2012 enough to have put Romney in the White...

The writing-off of Sarah Palin began not long after her departure from Fox News hit the newswaves last Friday. The Post’s Chris Cillizza wrote on Monday that Palin is now “officially gone,” at least from the national spotlight. And MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell bid the failed 2008 vice presidential candidate a self-satisfied adieu, saying that Palin had now lost the “slightest connection to political relevance.” Vincent Harris, a social-media consultant who helps Republican campaigns, wonders about O’Donnell’s conflict of interest in issuing those words: “He’s a … cable-news host! I mean, what else is he going to say? He’s speaking for...

Former Republican star and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and FOX news ended their partnership on Friday after three years, a source close to Palin told the Real Clear Politics Web site, the Morning Joe panel discussed Palin’s exit on Monday morning. “Sarah Palin represented a time and place in American politics and not 2008 so much as 2010. And that time is passing us very quickly. Party leaders are finally understanding that,” Joe Scarborough told the panel. Palin last appeared on Fox on December 19, 2012 when she spoke with the channel’s Greta Van Susteren about Benghazi and the two...

While the departure of Sarah Palin from Fox News as a paid contributor has caused endless speculation (as well as endless jubilation among her enemies) there are just a few known facts, according to the story in RealClearPolitics. After some negotiations for a renewal of her contract, Palin was made an offer which was refused. The parting of the ways is said to be amicable. That doesn't mean that some informed speculation is not warranted.