Polls Show Voters Still Don't Want Sarah Palin In Oval Office

New Poll Shows Majorities Don't Want Palin To Run


Sarah Palin attracted huge crowds across the country last fall as she promoted her best-selling memoir, but a new survey suggests an overwhelming number of Americans don't want the former Alaska governor to run for president.

According to a new CBS News poll out Tuesday, 71 percent are against the former Republican vice presidential candidate launching her own bid for the White House in two years while 21 percent are in favor of a potential run.

Broken down by party, 56 percent of Republicans are against a potential Palin presidential campaign while 30 percent are for it. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Democrats, 88 percent, are not in favor of a Palin presidential run.

The survey also finds significantly more people view Palin negatively than positively: 41 percent negative compared to 26 percent positive.

Both those numbers have increased since Palin's high-profile book tour late last year and since becoming a Fox News contributor last week. In November, 38 percent held an unfavorable view of Palin while 23 percent held a positive view of her.

Among Republicans in the latest poll, 43 percent hold a positive view of Palin while 30 percent of independents do. Meanwhile, just under a half of conservatives view Palin favorably while only 16 percent of liberals do.

Meanwhile, a majority of conservatives, 58 percent say Palin should run for president in 2012.




CNN Poll: Most Americans say Palin Not Qualified to serve as President


Fewer than three in 10 Americans think Sarah Palin's qualified to be president, according to a new national poll - the least of any of the five potential candidates included in the survey.

But another woman tops that list in the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday: two-thirds of the public thinks that Secretary of State HIllary Clinton's qualified for the Oval Office. That's more than Vice President Joe Biden, who's currently next in line for the presidency.

According to the poll, 28 percent of Americans say Palin is qualified to run the White House, with seven in 10 saying the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee is not qualified.

The survey indicates that a majority of Republicans, 54 percent, feel Palin is qualified, with 44 percent indicating she isn't. But only 29 percent of independent voters questioned feel she is qualified to serve as president, with 68 percent disagreeing. According to the poll, nine in 10 Democrats feel Palin is not qualified.


The poll's release comes one day before the release of Palin's book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

"The perception that Palin is not qualified to be president puts her significantly behind two potential rivals for the GOP nomination in 2012 - Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

According to the survey, nearly half of all Americans think Romney is qualified to be president, with 43 percent feeling the same way about Huckabee. Among Republicans, Palin is still lagging other potential 2012 primary candidates: 63 percent of GOPers think that Romney and Huckabee are qualified, 9 points higher than the number that say the same of Palin.

"Palin has many strengths - recent CNN polls indicate that Americans believe that she is not a typical politician, that she cares about average Americans, and that she is honest and trustworthy," says Holland. "But the perception that she is not qualified for the White House is her biggest Achilles heel."

An ABC News/Washington Post poll also released Monday indicates that 38 percent of Americans say Palin's qualified to serve as president, with six in 10 saying she's not qualified.

The CNN survey indicates that 67 percent of people questioned say that Clinton is qualified to serve in the Oval Office, 17 points higher than the 50 percent of Americans who think that Biden's qualified to take over as president.

Biden's low number may be attributable to negative feelings about the Obama/Biden administration rather than views of Biden personally.

"In the past, poll respondents who dislike an administration have sometimes taken it out on the vice president," say Holland. Polls from the late 1990s showed that Americans felt Al Gore was qualified to be president, but only if respondents were given the chance to say something negative about Gore that was unrelated to his qualifications, he adds. In the Bush administration, the number who thought Dick Cheney was qualified to be president dropped as the administration grew more unpopular. "Cheney's experience in office didn't change during that period - attitudes toward the Bush/Cheney administration did," he says.

Hillary Clinton also has the advantage of having been able to stay out of domestic policy debates, including health care, the economic stimulus, and other controversial matters, while adding almost daily to her experience in foreign policy, Holland adds, while Biden has been involved in the domestic policy disputes - "which might explain why some respondents were looking for a reason to say something negative about the veep."

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted November 13-15, with 1,014 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall sample.



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Sarah Palin's Book Tour Stops In Iowa...Signs Of 2012 Presidential Bid??

Sarah Palin hits Iowa on book tour


Sarah Palin made her post-election debut in first-in-the-nation Iowa Sunday, but her appearance could have easily taken place in any state. There were no meetings with influential local activists, no contact with the state GOP, nor any time devoted to chit-seeking efforts to raise cash for other candidates.

But if the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate's maiden trip to the Hawkeye State as a presidential prospect was unusual by Iowa precedent, the event illustrated why she doesn't necessarily need to stick to the traditional playbook – and raised the possibility that even sacrosanct political dictums of Iowa can be bent or even broken.

Signing books in a suburban chain bookstore, as she has throughout her publicity tour for "Going Rogue," Palin's visit to conservative western Iowa's hub city bore little resemblance to the typical forays of White House hopefuls into the state that traditionally kicks off the presidential campaign.

Instead, she breezed into a Barnes and Noble an hour-and-a-half after her scheduled noon starting time and penned her name into hundreds of books before heading up the interstate for another signing in South Dakota.

Asked between autographs why she chose to come to Iowa, Palin told a small group of reporters: "It's great to be in Iowa, everybody loves Iowa."

When a reporter inquired if she had any message for caucus-goers, Palin said only: "Thank you, appreciate you very much."

The small group of journalists was then quickly hustled out of a curtained-off section of the store where Palin was seated.

But does standard practice matter with Palin?

What makes her potentially so formidable was on vivid display in the hundreds of admirers who waited for hours on the ground in a mall hallway – and some began the vigil overnight in the bitter cold - to get a quickly scribbled signature, handshake and fleeting glimpse at the person most just called "Sarah."

Though some wearing Cornhusker red came from Nebraska, just over the Missouri River, many were from this city and the surrounding northwest Iowa counties that traditionally give Republican candidates some of their largest margins in the state.

But they weren't the sort of party regulars who comprise the county GOP committees and always show up when a national politician comes to town. Many said they hadn't previously participated in the state's quadrennial caucuses and some indicated that they weren't even sure what the caucuses are. And while most were self-identified conservatives, there were also registered Republicans or independents who had previously backed candidates of both parties but who were drawn to Palin because of what she represents.

Jane Mild, along with her daughter, Sarah, left their rural Guthrie County home at 6 in the morning to drive to Sioux City.

A precinct captain for Gov. Bill Richardson, a New Mexico Democrat, in 2008, Mild said she and her teenage daughter were inspired by Palin and see her as a model for women.

“I wish she was treated more fairly,” Mild said, noting the reports about her family and wardrobe. “She gets asked a lot of questions men don’t get asked.”

Palin, as this event and her previous well-attended book tour stops make clear, continues to enjoy a following that transcends politics and could potentially bring thousands of new participants into the Republican primary process.

Most of those interviewed here said they were ready to support Palin if she runs in 2012 and would caucus for her. If Palin capitalizes on this sort of dedication, she could enlarge the caucuses in the fashion that such non-traditional politicians as Pat Robertson did in 1988 and Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama did last year.

The impact Palin and her still-soaring celebrity could have on the 2012 GOP field was underscored in how sharply her book-signing Sunday differed from that of Huckabee, a potential 2012 rival. When the former Arkansas governor and reigning Iowa caucus champion signed copies of his latest book at a suburban Des Moines bookstore last month he had about 100 supporters stream through the line, many of them his loyalists from the 2008 campaign.

Yet for now, and it's still very early in the process, Palin appears to be doing little to build an organization. There was no sign-in sheet here that could have captured the valuable names and email addresses of potential caucus precinct captains.

Jason Recher, who travelled with her on the campaign and is now with her on the book tour, suggested Palin had little interest in using the 32-city swing to bolster her presidential prospects, at least outwardly.

"This book tour is about people - not politics," Recher said.

Yet anytime a White House prospect arrives on Iowa soil, of course, politics suffuses the appearance. And no Republican can draw buzz like Palin, whose picture took up most of the top half of the front page of the Sunday Sioux City Journal with a headline that read: “Something about Sarah.”

Palin was careful to apologize after the event for her tardiness (She blamed weather on the East Coast, though she had also spent some of her Sunday morning visiting wounded troops at Washington, D.C.’s Walter Reed Army Hospital). She said she didn’t know when she’d return to the state.

Some local Republicans – who are used to being courted by top national political figures – indicated disappointment that Palin only did the book stop.

“I guarantee we’d have 20,000 people show up for an event here,” Mark Lundberg, chairman of the Sioux County Republican Party told Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson.

A far smaller crowd, about 30 people, arrived at the bookstore parking lot on Saturday night to be in the front of the line. Swaddled in blankets, hats, gloves, hunting camo and all manner of layers, they sat in canvas, fold-up chairs as the temperature plummeted into the teens.

By mid-day Sunday, hundreds more were inside the mall, waiting quietly in line and thumbing through “Going Rogue” while a Santa Claus and Abe Lincoln looked on.

With a mix of Midwestern hospitality and wariness for an out-of-town reporter they explained why they were so drawn to Palin.

Patricia Anderson, a registered independent from Sioux City who hadn’t caucused, approached a reporter to make her case for the polarizing former governor.

“She tells you what she believes,” Anderson said. “You don’t have to guess. It’s better to listen to her than the media.”

Alice Revell, from rock-ribbed Sioux County to the north of here, sported a pin that read: “I Don’t Want To Have To Say Happy Holidays.”

“Her values are my values,” said Revell. “She’s pro-life. She doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk. She’s a hunter, my husband is an avid hunter.”

A pair of women from Omaha wearing shirts that identified them with the “Minuteman Patriots” said Palin represented what they called real American women.

“Not the elitists you see on television,” explained Pat Carro. Asked who she had in mind, Carro cited “the ones you see on “The View.’ ”

Another Omahan, Ray Hansen, braved the afternoon cold to pose for a picture in front of Palin’s book-tour bus, festooned with her image and an Alaska backdrop, after having his book signed.

“She’s a real American, that’s why,” Hansen said, when asked why he liked Palin.

Back inside, Palin, wearing her usual blue star pin along with a USO pin, took a marker to book after book, looping a large signature before greeting her admirers and asking their names as country music played.



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Sources: Politico, Amazon.com, Google Maps

Palin Fans Go Beserk At No-Show Indy Book Signing Event..."My Books Are Going Back Tomorrow"

Palin Booed By Indy Book Tour Crowd



Unhappy fans of Sarah Palin went rogue on the Alaska Republican during her book tour stop in Noblesville, Indiana on Thursday.

The local Borders outlet had handed out 1,000 wristbands to book purchasers; the wristbands were supposed to procure fans Palin's signature on their hardback copies of "Going Rogue." But several dozen people who had been promised signatures were turned away empty-handed after waiting hours in poor weather, a local news outlet, the Indy Channel, reported.

"We gave up our entire workday, stayed in the cold, my kids were crying," one man was quoted saying. "They went home with my wife. She was out here in the freezing cold all day. I feel like I don't want to support Sarah."

Another woman told Indy Channel, "We bought two books from Borders to have our receipt and our wristband to get it signed tonight. My books are going back to Borders tomorrow."

The angry crowd turned on Palin as she returned to her "Going Rogue" tour bus. Video below shows people booing and shouting at the bus, and shouting "Sign our books Sarah!" as the engine revved up and Palin departed.





Palin Greets Hundreds, But Not Everyone Leaves Happy


Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was met by a cheering crowd of more than 1,000 people when she arrived in Noblesville Thursday night, but not everyone left happy.

Palin stepped off her tour bus, holding her youngest son, Trig, just after 5:30 p.m. at the Borders store at Hamilton Town Center, 6News' Rick Hightower reported.

Palin waved to members of the crowd, who were shouting her name, before taking to a stage to welcome her Hoosier supporters.

"We had a great time a year ago in Indiana but I think I'm having even more fun now, though," Palin said. "You guys, thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for being out here and for just being great residents of this wonderful state, and, even more importantly, great Americans who care about our country and care about those people who want to fight for what is right."

The store handed out 1,000 wristbands for Thursday night's book signing, which wrapped up just before 9 p.m. Those who got to meet a woman they consider an idol walked away happy.

"I said, 'Sarah, thanks for hearing our voices,'" said Nancy Rourke of Greenwood.

"She's just selling what she is: good policy, good values for our country," said Margie Kimes.

Before getting back on her bus just after 9 p.m., Palin thanked the crowd one more time.

"Noblesville, this was so great. You guys are hardcore patriots. Thank you so much for being here," she said.

But not everyone went away happy. Several dozen people who had wristbands were turned away.

"They didn't have this organized well enough," said Sue Hendricks. "It was just not done right."

"I'm very disappointed. I think it was very rude. She could have at least apologized, and she didn't even do that," said Teresa Hedrick.

Many of the unhappy people stood in the rain all day, bought the book from Borders and clutched their wristbands for their opportunity to meet Palin.

"We bought two books from Borders to have our receipt and our wristband to get it signed tonight," said one woman. "My books are going back to Borders tomorrow."

"We gave up our entire workday, stayed in the cold. My kids were crying," said one man. "They went home with my wife. She was out here in the freezing cold all day. I feel like I don't want to support Sarah."

For those who did get to meet Palin, no personal signatures or pictures were allowed. Those who didn't get their books signed went home only with a piece of paper with Palin's signature.

Palin's book, "Going Rogue," went on sale Tuesday, but it has topped best-seller lists for weeks.

Palin also signed books in Fort Wayne earlier in the day.



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Sources: Huffington Post, Indy Channel, The Indianapolis Star, The Daily Beast, Newser, Daily Kos, Youtube, Google Maps

Palin's Book Tour Headed To Fort Hood...Royalties Donated To Victims

On the rogue again: Palin pushes memoir. Sarah Palin visited the political battleground state of Michigan Wednesday to sign copies of her new book, "Going Rogue." NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

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Sarah Palin rolls "Going Rogue" book tour to Fort Hood, will donate royalties to victims' families


Sarah Palin is rolling her "Going Rogue" book tour into Fort Hood, the site of the Nov. 5 shooting that left 13 dead and dozens wounded.

"I'm especially looking forward to meeting our brave men and women in uniform at Fort Hood," Palin, 45, wrote on her Facebook page.

She'll be at the base on Dec. 4.

"I'm joining the efforts of many others by donating my royalties from the book sales during our stop at Fort Hood to the families of the victims whose lives have been forever changed by the tragic events of November 5th," she wrote.

Gun-toting Army Capt. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist, has been charged with launching the vicious rampage at the nation's largest Army post.

He faces 13 counts of premeditated murder, setting in motion a court-martial proceeding that could end in the death penalty. Palin wrote she is "humbled" to join the effort to help the community heal in the wake of terrible tragedy.

The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP veep nominee is mounting a massive media blitz and bus tour to sell her memoir, which chronicles her rise from mayor of Wasilla to the epicenter of national politics.

Killeen Councilman Ernest Wilkerson, who voted for President Obama last year, welcomed Palin's visit.

"It's a great idea for her to come now and visit the troops. That way she'll know the significant role Fort Hood plays in our national security," he said.

"It's a great opportunity for her to come down and understand the full scope of this tragedy."

Wilkerson said he doesn't think it will hurt or help her, if she decides to run for president in 2012.

While he predicted members of the community may have differing opinions about her hawking books so close to the tragedy, he said she's just another celebrity visitor.

"Her coming in will be no greater or lesser than the Dallas Cowgirls coming to Fort Hood," he said. "I really do like her," he added. "She's spunky, fiery."

Dan Gallanffy, 60, a Killeen pastor who is registered as Republican, also lauded Palin for scheduling Fort Hood as part of her book tour.

"I like her views and her openness and her honesty," he said.

"She would be a good voice. She can probably provide some healing that is needed and some truth and honesty that is also needed."



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Sources: NY Daily News, MSNBC, Amazon.com, Google Maps

Palin's Book Tour Is An Immediate Success!...She's Hot Right Now!

Sarah Palin hits the (book) trail


If Sarah Palin were running for president, this is where she’d come: The outskirts of a second city in the conservative heartland of Western Michigan, where thousands gathered Wednesday to see her, shake her hand and have her sign their copies of “Going Rogue.”

And if she were running for president, she’d be doing about what she did Wednesday, under the watchful eyes a half-dozen capable advance hands, veterans of the White House and the McCain campaign, who herded the press and the public into even lines. She had a VIP list for key local conservatives, shuttling them discreetly to the front of the line. She had a few talking points, tailored for the local area, to deliver after she stepped down with a big smile from her big bus, handing baby Trig off to an aide after her four-inch heels hit the sidewalk outside a shopping mall Barnes & Nobles, where she held her first book signing.

“They deserve more credit than they’re getting for the level of early organization that they have,” observed John Yob, a Grand Rapids political consultant who served for a time as political director of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The stop in Grand Rapids felt like a political campaign event, not a book tour. For a woman written off as a disorganized celebrity on a tour run by monomaniacal book publicists, Palin and her aides were clearly thinking politics.

Yob was ushered past the rope line with his father, Chuck, a former Republican National Committeeman and regional power broker. The elder Yob penned an open letter to Palin after McCain announced that he was abandoning Michigan, cheering her public dissent from the campaign strategy, telling her she’d “kicked Joe Biden's butt in the debate,” and inviting her to “come to Michigan immediately.”

Also there were the minority leader of the Michigan House, Kevin Elsenheimer, and Joanne Voorhees, the conservative Kent County Republican Party chairwoman who was briefly in the news for abruptly cancelling an event for former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, on the grounds that hosting a moderate would be breaking with Republican “roots.” Two local state Representatives, Bob Genetski and Dave Agema, both devout Christian conservatives, were also invited to meet Palin.

The logistics weren’t perfect: The Kent County Republicans could be heard muttering that they’d been rushed past the former Alaska governor. But Chuck Yob said he was pleased after an advance man walked him and his son to the front of the line, and Palin reacted with pleased surprise to their presence.

“Oh my God, that’s neat,” she said.

Palin’s roadshow travels in a campaign-style bus painted to match the cover of her book, with a giant picture of Palin and Facebook and Twitter logos. She emerged with a wave for the adoring crowd, which had begun massing 24 hours earlier, and a few words for the television cameras.

Her staff was made up of volunteers: Jason Recher, a campaign advance man whom she describes in glowing terms in her book, and John Roberts, a former White House staffer, who steered her through the media scrum after she handed off her son. Also on the bus was an aide to her Political Action Committee, former RNC Finance Director Tim Crawford.

Western Michigan – an "awesome area of this great land" – can be rescued "if we apply some good free enterprise principles in our federal government," she said in a brief interview with reporters, where she dismissed Newsweek’s decision to put her on its cover in running shorts as “cheesy.”

"I would never have posed for Newsweek in shorts," she said of the picture, which was taken for an article in Runner’s World that ran last August.

Grand Rapids was where Palin first “’went rogue’ trying to reach out during the campaign,” she writes in “Going Rogue,” and it’s the beginning of a tour that will retrace many of the stops on the Republican primary in Palin’s demonstration of how the contest might have looked if she’d had her way.

Palin, meanwhile, ends “Going Rogue” with a tribute to the state.

“I’m thinking when I get back, I‘ll bake the kids a cake. And I’ll pull out a road map – I want to show Piper the way to Michigan,” she writes in the final line of her book.

The state seemed to be returning her affection Wednesday, as locals began lining up Tuesday evening outside the bookstore. By 5:00 a.m. Wednesday, hours before her appearance, the store had already handed out more than 500 wristbands entitling their bearers to a place on line. Aides said that in all, over 1,000 people had their books signed, and hundreds more came for a glimpse.

“She's one of us. She doesn't seem like a Washington elite,” said Denese Crouch, a homemaker who lives outside Grand Rapids, echoing the dominant theme in a canvass of the long line, which was the ease of identifying with Palin. “She seems to figure solutions to problems like I'd do with my own family,” Crouch said.

Indeed, though the line was broadly Republican, Palin’s persona and her outsider status seemed to trump any particular issues with most of her admirers.

“She stands for everything I believe. I wear a suit and nylons and pumps to work” while loving nature, said Kim VandeKoppel, who runs a printing business in Grand Rapids, and who also praised Palin’s “Christian beliefs.”

At the front of the line was Robin Case, 44, who’d driven the previous evening from Traverse City and who sat at the front of the line in sweatpants giving an endless series of interviews to local and national reporters. “What she represents is what I’m standing in line for,” she said repeatedly. “She's like you and me -- someone who represents me when we're sitting around the table like other normal folks.”

Case said she stopped working to take care of her in-laws, who suffer from dementia and were driven into poverty and onto Medicaid when “they got into that donut hole with prescriptions” she said, referring to a much-criticized provision of 2003 Republican legislation.

Her criticism, a reporter noted, sounded a bit like President Barack Obama’s. What did she think of his health care plan?

The politicians currently debating health care “just want to line their pockets” she responded. “Sarah Palin’s not like that.”

The event also drew its share of more ideological conservatives. Bob Weinert, 56, a fencing salesman from Lansing, said he’d heard Rush Limbaugh say recently that Palin is “the most conservative candidate out there.” She represents, he said, “limited government and traditional values,” including “putting homos back in the closet.”

“And putting Christmas in the stores,” added his wife, Rexanna, who said she felt she could trust the “down-to-earth” Palin.

A few minutes later, a diffident young man wandered by with a handmade “Homos for Palin” t-shirt until he encountered a mall security guard.

“You’ve got to zip it up or leave,” said the security guard and the young man, who said he was a college student but wouldn’t give his name, complied.

Palin’s tour will take her through the battleground states where, she writes, she felt the McCain campaign made her pull her punches. There are stops in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Fairfax, Virginia, Florida’s The Villages, and the Missouri Ozarks.

Michigan, though, is a particular preoccupation of hers, despite its place as the ancestral state of the presumptive 2012 GOP front runner, Mitt Romney, whose father was governor.

“In Michigan, the [2012] race will come down to Mitt Romney and one other candidate and if a candidate were to beat Mitt Romney in Michigan, that candidate will be the nominee,” John Yob noted.

Might that be Palin?

"I am inspired by these crowds to fight for the right thing in this country,” she said on her way into the Barnes & Nobles Wednesday before signing three hours worth of autographs and then returning to the bus, waving Trig’s hand to the crowd.



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Sources: Politico, OK Magazine, Google Maps

Sarah Palin, Barbara Walters Entire Interview (Videos)

Part I



Part II




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Sarah Palin Slams Obama Admin's Economic Fix..."Its Back-assward!"

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"Palin's Book Going Rogue Is Based On Fabrications,"...Says Nicolle Wallace (McCain's Camp)

Nicolle Wallace responds to Palin charges. Rachel Maddow discusses statements by former McCain campaign staffer Nicolle Wallace to The Rachel Maddow Show about Sarah Palin's new book with Ana Marie Cox of Air America Radio.

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McCain adviser: Palin’s book is fiction


Former McCain campaign senior adviser Nicolle Wallace says Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is "based on fabrications," and that the basis for Palin’s depictions of her and former McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt as villains "took place entirely in her imagination."

In a statement to The Rachel Maddow Show, the former McCain spokesperson repeatedly used the word "fiction" to describe Palin's narrative and echoed criticisms by other former McCain staffers.

"She probably has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better conceived and executed," Wallace said. "A book about that would have been painful but not entirely unfair," Wallace told an msnbc producer in an off-camera, on-the-record interview.

Wallace took particular issue with Palin's version of her Katie Couric interview, which did not cast the former vice presidential candidate in a favorable light.

Working Mom interview?

Palin described thinking the Couric interview would be lighthearted and fun. "It was supposed to be ... a working mom speaking with [another] working mom and the challenges that we have with teenage daughters," she told "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in an interview broadcast Monday.

Wallace told msnbc that this is "rationalization or justification or fiction." "We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two working gals ... that was supposed to be to highlight her foreign policy savvy."

In her book, Palin writes that the campaign selected Couric to interview her as a favor, to give the evening anchor "a career boost."

"She just has such low self-esteem," Palin recounts Wallace as saying.

Wallace said that was also "fiction," adding, "I am not someone who throws around the word 'self-esteem.' Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors ... I did not advocate an interview for anyone I am friends with."

"I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning," continued Wallace.

Trying to quell feud

On Sunday, NBC News reported that McCain specifically asked his former aides not to do television interviews rebutting Palin's charges and to avoid escalating the feud. In an interview with the Hill newspaper, McCain reportedly said he enjoyed reading Palin's book. "I hope she sells lots of them," McCain said.

Palin continues to make the rounds to promote her book. In an interview with Barbara Walters broadcast Tuesday, Palin says that a 2012 presidential bid is "not on my radar," but wouldn't rule out playing some role in the next presidential election.

"My ambition, if you will, my desire is to help our country in whatever role that may be, and I cannot predict what that will be, what doors will be open in the year 2012."

In her interview with Walters, Palin said she's received plenty of offers during the past few months, including to open up her family for a reality show. She has rejected that, but also said she wasn't sure whether a talk show would be best for her family.

"I'd probably rather write than talk," she told Walters.

The former Alaska governor also discussed David Letterman, whom she criticized for a sexually suggestive joke made at the expense of her teenage daughter in June. Palin told Walters she has ruled out an appearance on Letterman's late night TV show. "I don't think that I'd want to boost his ratings," she said.

Despite the internal squabbling and ultimate loss, Palin said she would go through the experience again. She "would do it again in a heartbeat," she told Walters.



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Palin's Media Blitz Could Be Her Political Waterloo...But She's No Joke!

Columnist David Brooks calls Sarah Palin "a joke".

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McCain camp bristles at Palin’s tell-all. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lashes out at some former members of John McCain’s presidential campaign staff in her new memoir, “Going Rogue.” Now some of the staffers are firing back. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.

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Palin opens up. Sarah Palin begins her book tour with an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

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From Levi to Letterman: Palin's rough year


Despite all the money and attention former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s autobiography is expected to draw as it hits bookshelves this week, it’s difficult to think of a national political figure who’s had a rougher year than the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.

Consider President Barack Obama with the ups and downs in his first year in office. Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's facing a tough re-election bid and the difficult task of getting 60 votes to pass health care through his chamber. And don't forget the leaders of the Republican party who are out of power and have seen the GOP’s poll numbers decline.

But from the moment the 2008 campaign ended until her surprising resignation as Alaska governor in July, Palin has endured political setbacks, suffered through embarrassing revelations, became the subject of ethics complaints (most of which were dismissed), and even feuded with a late-night comedian and the father of her grandchild.

Her calendar has been full of controversial moments:

* Immediately after the presidential contest was over, McCain campaign officials told reporters about Palin committing apparent acts of insubordination, like her unprecedented (and rejected) request to deliver her own concession speech.

In March, Levi Johnston — the father of her grandchild — announced that he and Palin’s daughter, Bristol, had ended their relationship.

* In April, Palin’s spokeswoman criticized Johnston’s tell-all appearance on the “Tyra Banks Show,” saying: “We’re disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration and even distortion of their relationship.”

* Also in April, the Alaska legislature voted to reject Palin’s pick for state attorney general, Wayne Anthony Ross, who had been criticized for calling gays and lesbians “degenerates.”

* In June, after comedian David Letterman made a crude joke about one of her daughters, Palin fired back calling his comments “sexually perverted,” while her husband Todd said, “Any 'jokes' about raping my 14-year-old are despicable.” Letterman later apologized.

* Also in the summer, Vanity Fair published a devastating article that recounted her troubles during and after the presidential campaign.

And after all of that, Palin shocked the world in July when she resigned from office — with some 18 months left in her first term.

“A good point guard … drives through a full-court press, protecting the ball, keeping her head up because she needs to keep her eye on the basket,” she said at her resignation announcement. “And she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. And that is what I'm doing.”

Palin’s political freefall

Her resignation, however, didn’t stop the embarrassments or setbacks. In August, the Alaska legislature voted to override her veto of $28.6 million in federal stimulus funds.

This fall, in that attention-grabbing special congressional election in New York, she led the charge of national Republicans endorsing the third-party conservative candidate over the more liberal GOP nominee. But that divide helped a Democrat win the seat.

And Palin’s resignation didn’t stop her political freefall, either. According to last month’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 27 percent of Americans have a positive view of her — down five points from the survey conducted just after her resignation, and down 19 points since she was selected as McCain’s running mate.

The result of all of this?

“Fewer people today see her as a serious political entity going forward,” said one Republican strategist who worked with Palin on the McCain campaign.

The battleground state book tour

But that isn’t going to stop her from selling a lot of books and attracting a lot of media attention. On Monday, she appears on Oprah Winfrey’s show to promote her book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

On Tuesday, the book goes on sale. And on Wednesday, she begins a book tour that will take her to 13 cities — 11 of which just happen to be in presidential battleground states (like Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia).

In fact, Palin starts her tour in Michigan, a battleground state the McCain campaign withdrew from the day of Biden-Palin vice presidential debate. Afterward, Palin went, well, rogue and openly questioned the move. “I want to get back to Michigan and I want to try," she said.

Just last week, in a posting she made on her Facebook page announcing her book tour dates, Palin quipped, “Last year, I made a promise to the good people of Michigan that I would be back, and now I’m keeping that promise.”

Can she make a political comeback?

The question is whether Palin’s book tour — and the publicity it will receive — can spark a political comeback after her rough year. If she does have her eyes on the presidency, her defenders say, next week’s rollout will be extremely important.

The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, a Palin supporter, believes that she remains a viable presidential contender. “It’s silly to claim Palin has no chance to win the nomination or the presidency,” he wrote after her resignation in July, citing her standing in early 2012 GOP primary polls and her ability to fire up the Republican base. “She’ll be able to make the case effectively that she should be the nominee, or she won't.”

In a recent e-mail exchange with NBC, Kristol added: “I’d say next month or so is very important for Palin, an unusual instance where a month three years before next election could be an inflection point regarding her chances, either positively or negatively.”

Yet other Republicans are no longer taking Palin as a serious presidential possibility. One party strategist, who requested anonymity to speak freely, says that Palin certainly appeals to the base. “In the right environment, she could be helpful to raise money.”

But the strategist argued that the “‘US Weekly’ atmosphere” surrounding her and her family makes her less viable. “It is hard to take someone that seriously with that kind of drama.”

Ditto the fact that she currently lacks an organization, the strategist said. “Making comments on Facebook is not the serious way to run for office.”

Republican political consultant Mike Murphy, who has been critical of Palin in the past, bluntly says that she won’t be the party’s nominee in 2012.

“She’ll have a muscular career as a political celebrity, and she’ll have a voice,” he said. “I just don’t think that she’s a strong political candidate.”

Murphy adds, “She is polarizing within the GOP and totally unpopular outside the party. And that is not a recipe to get into the White House.”



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Sources: MSNBC, ABC News, The Daily Beast, Amazon.com, Youtube, Google Maps

Sarah Palin & Hillary Clinton To Hold "Coffee Summit"? Its A Possibility

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Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton: "The Coffee Summit"?


Pres. Barack Obama had his Beer Summit.

Will they call a meeting between former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the Coffee Summit?

Such seems possible after Clinton's discussion about Palin with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday's "This Week."

In fact, the following exchange seems destined to be quite the water cooler subject in newsrooms all over America in the coming days:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: While you've been gone Sarah Palin is making quite a splash back here in the United States. Her book "Going Rogue" is about to be released but there are already excerpts out. And she has some kind words for you in the book. She says she was wrong to criticize you last year for whining and now she says that she realized the media was biased when they were talking about your candidacy. And she goes on to say this, to write this.

"Should Secretary Clinton and I ever sit down over a cup of coffee, I know that we will fundamentally disagree on many issues. But my hat is off to her hard work on the 2008 campaign trail. A lot of her supporters think she proved what Margaret Thatcher proclaimed. 'If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.'" It sounds like she's fishing for a coffee date. Is it going to happen?

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, you know, I've never met her. Look, I'd look forward to sit down and talk with her. Obviously we're going to hear a lot more from her in the upcoming weeks with her book coming out and I would look forward to having a chance to actually get to meet her.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Was the media fair to her?

CLINTON: Well, you know George, I'll leave that for my book if I ever write another one.

It seems a metaphysical certitude that with all the attention Palin is getting with her book coming out, along with high-profile interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters this week, this exchange between Clinton and Stephanopoulos will get a lot of media focus.

How it will be covered is a different matter entirely.

Stay tuned.



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Sarah "Going Rogue" Palin Is Back In Full Force!...Plans To Help Crush Democrats In 2012

Palin opens up about Couric, Johnston. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin begins her book tour with an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which she talks about Levi Johnston, the McCain campaign and her interview with Katie Couric. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.

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Gone Rogue


Moderate Republicans—yes, they are not yet extinct, though most are in hiding—scoff at Sarah Palin and wish she would go away. But she's not going away. This week she's going on-air with Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey to flog her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, and to promote her brand of in-your-face, power-to-the-people conservatism.

President Obama is no doubt happy to have her out there on full display. He cannot help but relish the prospect, no longer farfetched, that the Republicans will nominate Palin to oppose his reelection in 2012. A student of history, Obama could be thinking of his predecessor in presidential coolness, John F. Kennedy. In 1963 Kennedy's advisers counseled against giving Sen. Barry Goldwater national stature by posing with the GOP's conservative insurgent at a White House photo op. "What are you giving that SOB all that publicity for?" demanded White House aide Kenny O'Donnell. "Leave him alone," JFK replied. "He's mine."

Obama knows the long odds against a right-wing populist winning the presidency, no matter how good she looks in a skirt (or running clothes), brandishing a gun. He shouldn't be too cocky, however, because the death of the center is ultimately a problem for him and the whole country. If the Palinistas seize the GOP, they probably cannot take the White House. But their brand of no-prisoners partisanship sure can tie up Congress.

In modern memory, Capitol Hill has never been so polarized. With conservatives refusing to reach across the aisle, it will be hard to get even the most modest health-insurance reform through the U.S. Senate, where a 41-vote minority can block legislation. Without bipartisanship, forget about reducing the deficit or doing anything meaningful on the environment, immigration, or tax reform.

Diehard right-wing congressmen do not deserve all the blame. Obama tried to foster bipartisanship at the outset of his administration, but he didn't try very hard, and his fellow Democrats can be just as rigidly partisan on the left. Obama seems reduced to fencing with Fox News, which won't get him very far or earn him a place in the history books.

Governing effectively requires a "big tent" approach to politics. To pass the New Deal and win reelection three times, Franklin D. Roosevelt built a coalition of labor, Northern liberals, and Southern conservatives. In a body politic that swings right, swings left—but never too far without swinging back again—it is impossible to win a governing majority without a coalition of true believers and moderates.

The two greatest postwar presidents understood this. Dwight Eisenhower governed in the 1950s by deftly uniting center and right, and Ronald Reagan did the same in the 1980s. They needed to be flexible to the point of gross expediency. To placate the far right, Ike shamefully refused to stand up for his friend and fellow statesman Gen. George Marshall, who was ludicrously attacked by Sen. Joe McCarthy as "soft" on communism. Reagan piously gave lip service to the right-wing social agenda while doing nothing to further it by legislation; he also chose George H.W. Bush to be his vice president and allowed the ultrapragmatic James A. Baker III to run the White House. The "Gipper" talked tough about the Russians--while doing more than any other president to foster détente. With a slyness that belied their smiling patriotism, Eisenhower and Reagan confused and occasionally exasperated their own followers. But it's no coincidence the Eisenhower '50s and Reagan '80s were periods of unusual peace and prosperity.

Since taking office, Obama has so far failed to win the battle for the center. The post-election polls show that the country is, if anything, drifting to the right. Obama needs to win some of those drifters back if he wants to get things done. The Republican right, hellbent on preventing that, aims to crush the last scattered remnants of the old moderate GOP establishment--or any Republican who will work with the opposition. The talk-show shouters are cheering on the final purge, demanding purity.

By definition, populist movements run on a fervor that confuses honorable compromise with appeasement. Everything is reduced to us and them. This is particularly destructive when it occurs within parties. During the Reagan-Bush administration, the Bushes of Texas (but really Connecticut) were never all that comfortable with the Reagans of Hollywood. But they worked at getting along. The easier course is to rant and rail on The O'Reilly Factor. That will get you a big cable-TV audience. But it risks turning off the larger public to politics altogether. And that can't be good for the country.






Palin's Base Appeal


Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ernest Gruening: war veteran, former editor of The Nation magazine, and Franklin Roosevelt's nominee for governorship of the then-territory of Alaska in 1939. Having held that post for 14 years, he was elected to the United States Senate for the transition period of Alaskan statehood and went on to hold the seat for a decade. He is best-known to posterity as having cast one of only two Senate votes against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and also for introducing a resolution to establish a nationwide 911 emergency number.

This brief historical reflection takes care of the lazy charge, made by Matthew Continetti in his new book, The Persecution of Sarah Palin,that liberal dislike of his heroine is no more than "a distaste for those who hail from outside America's coastal metropolises; a revulsion toward people who do not aspire to adopt the norms, values, politics, and attitudes of the Eastern cultural elite." Gruening's career also illustrates the major difference between a solid résumé and a perilously emaciated one.

Sarah Palin herself can apparently never tire of contrasting her folksy provincialism with the pointy-headed intellectuals, and with those in the despised city of "Washington," where her supporters want—it would seem against her own better instincts—to move her. To hear the woman talk, you would imagine that populism was a magic formula that had never been tried before (though Continetti and his colleagues at the conservative Weekly Standard eagerly compare Palin to the raucous demagogue and onetime Klan-fan William Jennings Bryan: remember—they said it, not me).

But the problem with populism is not just that it stirs prejudice against the "big cities" where most Americans actually live, or against the academies where many of them would like to send their children. No, the difficulty with populism is that it exploits the very "people" to whose grievances it claims to give vent.

Look at the charges that surfaced against Palin during the past election, and then look at how they played out. It was alleged that she was a member or supporter of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP); that she had been an endorser of Pat Buchanan's "Reform" Party candidacy in 2000; that she was a skeptic about man-made global warming; that she thought God was on our side in Iraq; that she favored the teaching of creationism in schools; that she attended a wacko church where exorcism of witches was enthusiastically celebrated. Later fact-checking modified a number of these allegations—Continetti is on better ground here—and we can now say that Palin did no more than attend a couple of conventions of the AIP, of which her husband was a member, and send it one friendly video message while she was governor of the state in question. It further turns out that she attended that Buchanan rally, wearing a pro-Buchanan button, only because she thought it was the polite thing to do.

As for Iraq, all she meant was that she hoped God would be on our side, or we on his. On global warming she now splits the difference: it could be cyclical or it could be man-made. As for the theory of evolution, the most she really asks is that both sides of the discussion be taught. (On the witch-exorcism stuff, not even her stoutest apologists have been able to help her out: it's all on YouTube, as is the quasi-coherent speech with which she bid farewell to her governorship without a word of warning to her voters or backers.

I would urge you to scan both links and see if they don't make you feel suddenly much more elitist.)

So there it is: anti-Washington except that she thirsts for it, and close enough (and also far enough away to be "deniable") to the paranoid fringe elements who darkly suspect that our president is a Kenyan communist. If you object to Kenyans interfering in the internal affairs of these United States, you really ought to raise an eyebrow at a candidate for the governorship of Alaska who accepts anointment from "Bishop" Thomas Muthee, a weird person who claims that witch removal in his Kenyan parish led to a reduction in crime, booze, and traffic violations.

The Palin problem, then, might be that she cynically incites a crowd that she has no real intention of pleasing. If she were ever to get herself to the nation's capital, the teabaggers would be just as much on the outside as they are now, and would simply have been the instruments that helped get her elected. In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them. It's also much more dangerous, because it meanwhile involves giving a sort of respectability to ideas that were discredited when William Jennings Bryan was last on the stump. The Weekly Standard (itself not exactly a prairie-based publication) might want to think twice before flirting with popular delusions and resentments that are as impossible to satisfy as the demand for a silver standard or a ban on the teaching of Darwin, and are for that very reason hard to tamp down. Many of Palin's admirers seem to expect that, on receipt of the Republican Party nomination, she would immediately embark on a crusade against Wall Street and the banks. This notion is stupid to much the same degree that it is irresponsible.

Then there's the question of character and personality. Decades ago, Walter Dean Burnham pointed out that right-wing populists tended to fail because they projected anger and therefore also attracted it. (He was one of the few on the left to predict that the genial Ronald Reagan would win for this very reason.) Let's admit that Sarah Palin is more attractive—some might even want to say more appealing—than much of her enraged core constituency. But then all we are considering is a point of packaging and marketing, where charm is supposed to make up for what education and experience have failed thus far to supply. We are further obliged to consider the question: exactly how charming is the Joan of Arc of the New Right, who also hears voices speaking to her of "spiritual warfare"?

I admit that I have winced at some of the lurid speculations about Governor Palin's family life, and thought them unkind and tasteless even as I lapped them up. She now claims that Levi Johnston is a fabricator when he describes a wildly dysfunctional Palin household. So then: what if she's right about him? It wasn't the liberal elite media who dug up this scapegrace and nudity artist. It was the Republican nominee for the vice presidency who hauled the lad before the cameras and forced us to look at him: a fit husband for her beloved daughter and an example to errant youth in general. Once again, one is compelled to ask which would be worse: a Sarah Palin who really meant what she merely seemed to say, or a Sarah Palin who would say anything at all for a cheap burst of applause.

This is not a small matter for the Republican Party. (And again: it was senior Republican operatives, and not jeering liberals, who told my Vanity Fair colleague Todd Purdum about the hectic atmosphere, of hysteria and collapsing scenery, that accompanied their lame attempt to present Sarah Palin as plausible during the last campaign.)

The United States has to stand or fall by being the preeminent nation of science, modernity, technology, and higher education. Some of these needful phenomena, for historical reasons, will just happen to concentrate in big cities and in secular institutions and even—yes—on the dreaded East Coast. Modernity can be wrenching, as indeed can capitalism, and there will always be "out" groups who feel themselves disrespected or left behind.

The task and duty of a serious politician, as Edmund Burke emphasized so well, is to reason with such people and not to act as their megaphone or ventriloquist. Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime.

This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.



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