Posted on 07/12/2013 7:06:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Sarah Palin underexposed?
It’s hard to imagine. But in Alaska, where she is considering a Senate run, she might be. The former governor “has no profile in Alaska. She’s not active,” says a Republican consultant familiar with Alaska politics. “She’s doing her own thing personally. She’s not giving speeches and doing Republican-women events and fundraisers and helping people. She’s just very much under the radar.”
That kind of invisibility may have prompted her potential opponent, Democrat Mark Begich, to snarkily remark to Politico yesterday, “I don’t know if she’s a resident. She’s been away from Alaska a lot.”
According to political insiders in the Last Frontier, the former governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee faces numerous hurdles should she decide to jump into the race. Two prominent Republicans have already announced they’re running, and Begich is a popular incumbent.
In Alaska, Palin just doesn’t enjoy the same popularity she once did. A February Public Policy Polling poll showed Palin at 59 percent disapproval and a mere 34 percent approval rate among Alaska voters. That same poll found that Begich would beat Palin by 16 points in a heads-up race. Republican internal polls this spring found similar favorable/unfavorable numbers among Republican voters in the state. Some polls, however, paint a rosier picture for Palin: Alaska GOP pollster Marc Hellenthal found that she had a 65 percent favorable rating in a recent poll of state GOP-primary voters. But even Hellenthal’s poll found that Palin would have a huge hurdle to overcome in the general election: Among Alaska voters overall, her unfavorable rating is 53 percent.
“Right now, Begich is looking very, very good,” Hellenthal says. “If you and I were betting, we’d be betting on Begich.”
Nor is it clear Palin could generate much support on the national front. When contacted, the Club for Growth had no comment on a potential Palin senate bid, and Crossroads had nothing to say either. Of the conservative groups I called, only Senate Conservatives Fund executive director Matt Hoskins was openly enthusiastic about a Palin run, e-mailing, “Sarah Palin would make a great senator. She’s not afraid to take on liberals and she’s willing to buck the establishment in her own party. If she runs, we will support her. No question.”
One issue driving Palin to seriously consider the race may be her now-cold relations with Joe Miller, Begich’s Republican opponent in 2010, whom she endorsed. “The Palin-Miller relationship is no more,” says a GOP consultant familiar with Alaska. “She was very helpful to him in the primary. Once he won the primary, he thought he was a senator and he kind of said ‘thanks, but no thanks’” to her involvement in the general election.
“There’s been a little bit of a split there,” the consultant adds. “She’s not interested in doing the Joe Miller thing again.”
Miller isn’t buying it: “I suspect that is just wishful thinking on behalf of some establishment consultant, and has no basis in reality,” he says, adding that he has long worked with Palin. “I don’t believe that she would say such a thing. What is clear to me is that anyone who would presume to speak for Sarah Palin doesn’t know Sarah Palin.”
Running could cost Palin. She has recently returned to Fox News as a contributor, a lucrative and prominent perch which she would almost certainly lose if she announced a Senate bid. If she was running her own race, she probably wouldn’t be able to maintain her role as a kingmaker in the GOP party by making endorsements and traveling around the country, as she did in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. And if she loses, she could become less influential: Losing to Begich in a one-on-one match-up in her home state is different than losing as a running mate in a national election, and would be a second straight political loss.
She also would become a rallying point for the other side. When news that she was considering a bid leaked, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina celebrated what a Palin run could do for Democrats, saying on Twitter, “Candidate @sarapalin [sic]? Could anything be better for natl Dems?” and “If @SarahPalinUSA runs for senate, id take the over on who she raises more money for, Dems or Repubs.”
All of this means that Palin might be more interested in considering a 2016 presidential bid than trying to become one of a hundred senators. On the other hand, she may not even want to remain a Republican: She suggested just a couple of weeks ago in an interview with Fox News that she might leave the GOP and help form a new party.
On balance, Palin, who generated plenty of attention by publicly flirting with a 2012 presidential bid, seems unlikely to mount a Senate run. Instead, look for her to continue to discuss the idea — and ultimately endorse someone who isn’t Joe Miller.
— Katrina Trinko is an NRO reporter.
She did, but it was declared illegal and she couldn't touch the money.
Ethics Probe: Palin Legal Defense Fund Illegal
Moreover, she got NO help from the National Republican Party, which wanted to see her go down in flames too, just like Pete Rouse's Rat wrecking crew, coordinated and funded through the DNC.
I do not think Palin will ever run for a state wide office again. She has much more power as a king maker then she would have as a senator. She might however run for a national office just to piss off the GOPe.
Well, yes. Palin's reasons for resigning were both understandable and legitimate.
But thoughtful voters have an emotional side as well as an analytical side. Neither side can be ignored. Like you, I understand why Palin resigned. Perhaps I would have done the same in that situation.
But I am still somehow disappointed in Palin for doing that. I know that is NOT fair to her, or a reasonable position to take, but it is what it is.
Sort of like being engaged to a great lady, a lady who calls off the wedding for good reasons. It still stings.
It is not a stretch to say that Governor Palin receives a bitter reception from some of her fellow republicans. The reasons for that vary depending on exactly who is dishing out the denunciation. Many of them however, use the same line of attack against her. One after the other, they cite her resignation as the source of their disdain.
Some of the latest examples were posted Monday on "Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire," in a piece called "More Republicans Come Out Against Palin." He notes that Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (Super-RINO) have both recently voiced concern about Governor Palin. It says:
Several more prominent Republicans have questioned Sarah Palin’s qualifications for president because she quit in the middle of her term as Alaska governor.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) told the Kansas City Star, "I have reservations about anyone who quits as governor halfway through the term."
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R) told CNN that, "I mean, she was a governor. But the fact that she left office before even completing her first term is — that’s just not an attitude that I think is necessarily in the best interest of you.
On Tuesday, Real Clear Politics posted a story titled, "GOP Hopefuls Speak No Ill of Palin – for Now" which stated the intention of republicans to use Governor Palin’s resignation against her. They write:
But perhaps the most salient line of attack that her potential GOP rivals might use against her is criticism of her decision to resign with a year and a half left in her first term as governor.
Despite their almost universal praise for Palin’s ability to energize the party, there have already been several instances in which Republican White House hopefuls have drawn attention to her early resignation.
Using the resignation as a means to attack Governor Palin, republican political opponents, just as many leftists and media types before them, have distorted her record by pushing a narrative they wish to pursue. As the governor stated in her book, Going Rogue:
“The sin of omission glares in their reporting.”
The same goes for politicians dictating their message through reporters. What they are omitting from the discourse is why Governor Palin left office in the first place. This has polluted the perception many in the general public have towards Governor Palin.
To understand why Governor Palin resigned from office is to understand the environment she found herself in after returning to Alaska following the 2008 Presidential campaign. For a more complete understanding of this environment, I suggest reading all of chapter five in Going Rogue, called “The Thumpin.” For now, here is an overview of that chapter that I hope will give readers a better understanding of the conditions that lead to her decision.
Governor Palin writes that when she flew home from the campaign in 2008, the "political landscape" in Alaska "had permanently changed." She states:
The fallout was immediate: the governor’s office was inundated with frivolous ethics complaints. Literally scores of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Public Records Act requests rolled in, generating thousands of pages that required hours of work to process. Reporters abandoned actual reporting in favor of tabloidizing my family, my record, and me.
Governor Palin writes about the fact that her administration had received a normal amount of FOIA requests prior to her selection on the 2008 GOP ticket. But after the campaign, her office was hit with a "tidal wave" of FOIA requests and "hundreds of demands" for various communication transactions, such as emails. She wrote:
Only the opposition really comprehends the work involved with FOIA requests-from the retrieval of all correspondence and emails, to copying them for lawyers and staff to review in order to remove confidential or privileged information, to assembling and packing them, and on and on. Just one of these requests for a certain batch of e-mails generated 24,000 individual sheets of paper. So instead of doing our jobs, my staff, including attorneys, spent thousands of hours and wasted more than $2 million of public monies to sort through it all one sheet at a time.
What these political operatives did was to twist the ethics reform measures that she had fought for, into a "weapon" to use against her. Governor Palin described the people who where behind these tactics as "relentless and shameless," which they were. She mentions the time when Linda Kellen Biegel (aka Celtic Diva), filed an ethics charge against her for wearing a jacket with the logo of her husband’s Iron Dog sponsor on it. She adds:
I was charged with accepting "bribes" of chocolates and a kids’ hockey stick when I gave a speech at a charity event in Indiana. I was charged with holding a fish in a photo for a state fishing pamphlet. I was served with a complaint filed under the name of a fake British soap opera character. I was charged with conducting an interview with a national media figure in my state office. I was charged with answering reporters’ questions in the lobby of my state office the day I returned to work and found a herd of reporters congregated near the doorway to my office. As I tried to make my way through, I stopped to answer questions-and got slapped with an ethics accusation.
Governor Palin is a true reformer in every sense of the word. A key issue for her has always been restoring integrity back into the public sector. Her history of standing on the side of the people, against corrupt members of her own party, is a matter of record. The Alaskan people had their share of unethical politicians, and now democrat operatives were making a "mockery" of the new laws put in place to end their own culture of corruption. It was dirty politics at it’s worse and was truly appalling to watch.
The attacks on the governor were not easy, but had they been personal attacks against her, she would have stayed in office. The fact that her state was suffering because of the actions of political attack dogs, was unbearable to her. She wrote (emphasis mine):
Loss of reputation I can take. But I could not and cannot tolerate watching Alaska suffer. One by one, each ethics complaint against me was tossed out. But a new one quickly sprouted to take its place. I knew it wouldn’t stop and the ongoing cost to our system plagued me. My loyal staff who had accomplished so much with me in our years in office were besieged. No one could paralyze my administration before, and I wouldn’t have been told to sit down and shut up, but these frivolous and expensive complaints were effectively doing what no one else could. [...] At some point, you have to say "Enough." You have to pick your battle. Pick your hilltop. And hold the position of your own choosing. My state was being shaken by one partisan earthquake after another. Every time we found steady ground, "another avalanche of FOIAs, ethics complaints, and lawsuits crashed down. My team had been targeted for destruction because of who the team leader was. I began to think it was time to pass the ball.
Proving Governor Palin’s point about the political nature of this assault on her administration, she had this to say:
The reaction to my announcement was instructive. The same people who had wanted nothing more than to throw me out of office were suddenly outraged that I was obliging.
That is because the resignation caught her political opponents off-guard…
It’s pretty clear that the governor had gone through a lot of garbage and thought out her resignation thoroughly. She obviously did it for the State of Alaska above all else. I remember how absolutely frustrating it was to watch her try to push through her agenda, only to see these operatives create so much obstruction.
There was also the group of state legislators using their positions to not only get some media exposure, but also curry favor with the national democrats. These members of the legislature, who had been sworn to carry out their duties for the citizens of Alaska, were instead playing to the cameras and stalling the business of the state. The governor knew that she was the target of the assault, not the other members of her administration. She, as a good leader should, stepped aside so that the people’s business could be conducted in peace.
It makes you wonder what these republican critics would do if faced with a similar situation. Would they let the people’s business be stifled due to political attacks? Would they care that their constituents resources were being wasted, all so that the establishment could be rest assured knowing that they had finished their terms? In other words, would they let the people who voted them into office pay the price for their own political advancement?
I also wonder if Governor Palin’s resignation would have been necessary had the Republican party lifted one finger to help her, while it was happening. I was stunned to see the attacks happen, but I was more stunned to see Governor Palin go through it alone. Not one national republican stood up for her! She was their candidate for Vice President just a few short months before. I imagine the attacks would have continued had Governor Palin had some support from national republicans. However, it would not have been as easy for those involved to conduct such a hideous campaign if the national party had shined a spotlight on it and said "enough!" But they didn’t say anything… Their silence was deafening.
It bears repeating that Governor Palin hasn’t wasted her time since leaving the governor’s office. She was instrumental in leading opposition to Obama’s misguided health care legislation. Her endorsements during the 2010 midterms helped changed the face of Washington for the better. She continues to be one of, if not the first conservative leader to weigh in on important issues facing our country, helping to frame each debate. What have these critics done to advance the principles the Republican party? Governor Palin turned over her agenda to her lieutenant (who was just elected by the people), then became one of the most outspoken conservative activists in the nation. Her work has been invaluable.
When politicians or members of the media criticize Governor Palin for resigning office, remember why she did so. Then ask yourselves, who are these people criticizing her for making that move? What would they have done if they were in her shoes, and why? This move on her part was what a good leader and a true public servant should do, given the circumstances. If only all of our elected leaders put the public good above their own ambition, perhaps this country would be better off.
I often wonder how news editors can look at themselves in the mirror knowing the extreme deceit they perpetrate on America by being so biased in news coverage as to be liars but avoiding the true definition of the word by a technicality. I wonder the same thing about people like the two of you, who willfully, deliberately remain IGNORANT or OBLIVIOUS of the truth behind why Palin very justifiably, reasonably and understandably resigned, can look at yourselves in the mirror. You are liars to yourselves and to others, and you know it. Just like the biased liberal editor of the newspaper knows full well the depth of his deceit.
Both of you STINK.
To this day, people are still ignorant of what the Dems and Republicans did to Sarah in Alaska
If you have, explain how anyone would have benefited from Palin bankrupting her entire family in order to impress hardheaded idiots?
The lack of support from the RNC speaks volumes about the Republican party.
Really ? I’ve been on FR since the first day I got the internet: Saturday, October 31, 1998. Needless to say, if you were here from 1997, your comments were 100% unadulterated trollbait. BTW, I’ve taken down plenty of trolls that have old sign-up dates. Just sayin’...
Don’t blame us because Sarah Palin refused to serve out her elected term as the Governor of the state of Alaska. When was the last time you ever heard of a Governor just quitting in the middle of their term?
Don’t blame us because the Alaskan citizenry may be reluctant to elect Sarah Palin to another position of responsibility.
My question to you is why would you be so eager to elect her to a position of high authority such as the senate or presidency when she couldn’t take the heat as Gov of Alaska? Maybe that brings into question your ability to make an intelligent decision.
She had to reach into her own pocketbook for all the B/S lawsuits that were filed by Democrats, i.e., the State of Alaska was not picking up the "bill" to defend her. I believe because of state law, unlike many other states where the state does foot the bill.
What's to keep her from doing the same as a U.S. Senator, easy answer; your question reveals a lack of basic knowledge. A U.S. Senator has immunity from suit while in office, as long as the suit is in regard to the duties of said office, unlike Governor of Alaska.
Bingo. For some, being ignorant of this subject might’ve made sense 4 years ago. Not now. Using the media and political establishment talking points is the giveaway that these folks are trolls.
We blame you for repeating willfully dishonest and misleading talking points, madam.
No probably to it. If Palin announces for the Alaska seat then she's in there for the duration. And that's what I see is the biggest drawback. She can't campaign for other conservative candidates where she may make a difference, both at the primary and general election level. So are we better off with one conservative junior senator from Alaska? Or perhaps three or four or five conservative senators that Sarah Palin helped elect?
This does too...
Next for GOP leaders: Stopping Sarah Palin
Tucson happened two months after this story appeared in Pollutico, and the GOP-E hung her out to dry.
My cold fury at the Republican Party over its treatment of Palin remains unabated and I will never again support it, focusing instead upon individual Conservative candidates and office-holders.
I don't know if Hussein is even a citizen, BUT THAT DOESN'T SEEM TO CONCERN THE DIMS AT ALL!
Palin, the Alaska Bloggers and "Ethicsgate"
Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, And The Cost Of Fighting Chicago Thug Politics
Obama rewards Troopergate Chairman
Palin Points to "Strange Doings" With WH's Rouse
Different laws are in effect. They can't hurt her or her family now like they did in 2009 with their frivolous, well-coordinated complaints and lawsuits.
That play happened in 1994, but it was Oliver North. He attracted ALL the Dem’s money to fight him. . .and we ran away and won the House and Senate. And North STILL just barely lost. . .
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.