Sarah’s now twittering at SarahPalinUSA.
December 4
AP reports: Palin says nation should rededicate itself to God:
Sarah Palin says the United States should rededicate itself to seeking God’s will, arguing that a humble spirit could help leaders get more answers on issues such as health care, energy and national security.
In a video released Friday by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president said it’s important for leaders to acknowledge they don’t have all the answers.
According to BGEA:
In dealing with her daily challenges, Sarah Palin leans on the Bible verse that says, “God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and might and a sound mind.”
She told our video producers, “That scripture reminds me that we don’t have to be afraid … that God will be there for us as we call upon Him, because He has given us … all those gifts of the Holy Spirit if we call out for them.”
Video here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In an interview with Christianity Today, Huckabee fields a question about Palin:
Q: A lot of people compare you and Sarah Palin as conservative Christian candidates. What separates you two? What makes you different?
A: Well, it’s hard for me to say what’s different because I don’t know. I don’t know how people make the comparison. We were both governors, we certainly are both pretty clear in our expression of faith, so yeah, we share those things. But other than those things, I’m not sure where the comparisons are. We’re both Republican, we’re both pro-life — there are a lot of similarities that way — but she has a very different political direction than I do. I’m not sure of her future politically, and I’m really not sure of mine either.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Palin at Facebook: Obama should boycott Copenhagen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Palin greets 1250 at Fort Hood. AP notes:
She hasn’t been speaking to most reporters during her tightly controlled, stay-on-message book tour.
No gotcha? You betcha.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Los Angeles Times continues its multi-post/multi-day crusade against Sarah, spinning her remark that people have the right to ask for a candidate’s birth certificate thus: Sarah Palin revives “stupid conspiracy” of Obama’s birth certificate.
Revives? We didn’t know it was dead.
And still not a LALA Times peep about Climategate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More than 1,000 Palin fans show up for book signing in Plano.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At Politico, Ben Smith reports:
In the months since she returned to the public spotlight, Sarah Palin’s continually evolving political identity has undergone a subtle change as her public persona centers increasingly on her disabled son, Trig (who is always on her hip as she steps off the bus).
Palin began her political career as a reformer breaking up Alaska’s corrupt boys club and shifted seamlessly into last fall’s campaign trail culture warrior. But her decision to carry to term her Down syndrome child established a special relationship with anti-abortion activists, and now Palin has transformed herself from a politician who was anti-abortion into the leading figure of the anti-abortion movement.
Salon spins it this way: Trig, the anti-abortion straw baby.
December 5
Greta Van Susteren provides an inside look at the Sarah Palin-Rev. Billy Graham meeting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Hill reports:
Palin to face another ethics battle:
Under state law, elected officials may not “use or authorize the use of state funds, facilities, equipment, services, or another government asset or resource” for campaigning, stumping or politicking.
But Palin, argues Andree McLeod — a local activist who has filed many ethics complains against the former Alaska governor — sought political advice from her staff and asked her office to help her arrange media interviews or phone conversations leading up to Election Day, all using their government-issued e-mail addresses.
This is why Palin says she stepped down — to save the state of Alaska from the energy drain and expense of defending their elected governor from this kind of vendetta. McLeod is a former Palin supporter who was passed up for a job in the Palin administration.
To date, all 15 ethics complaints against Palin have been dropped. McLeod takes it back to square one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two thousand brave D.C.’s first 2009 snowstorm to meet Palin in Fairfax, VA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That evening, Palin cracks wise at the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, an organization of Washington-based journalists who come to hear political figures make fun of themselves. Traditionally, what is said goes unreported, but because of the immense public interest in Palin, it is agreed that her remarks will be reported.
AP reports:
Palin targeted her hosts, Democrats and Sen. John McCain’s campaign staff, as well as herself:
If the election had turned out differently, she said, “I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book, Going Rogaine.” Biden has sparse hair.
The crack about seeing the Russian Embassy from her hotel referred to Palin having told an interviewer during last year’s campaign that her qualifications for high office included that “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.”
As for her hosts, she said she was glad to be appearing before an elite audience of leading intellectuals, “or as I like to call it, a death panel.”
Complete transcript at Gretawire.
December 6
In Sioux City, Iowa, 500 wait in freezing weather: Palin’s Iowa stop spurs talk of presidential run.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Wall Street Journal reports: In an interview with David Gregory, John McCain says Palin has “earned herself a very big place in the Republican political scene” and that he is “proud of her.”
Then:
“I am entertained every time I see these people attack her and attack her and attack her. She’s irrelevant, but they continue to attack her. I am so proud of her and the work that she is doing,” McCain said.
Irrelevant?
Brooke Buchanan, a McCain spokesperson, said in an email that the senator wasn’t saying Palin was “irrelevant” but was quoting others as saying she was irrelevant, and noting that despite that, they continued to attack her.
December 7
Palin polls within one point of Obama as her popularity rises to 46 while his job approval falls to 47.
Politico reports:
Rick Santorum: Sarah Palin has “explaining” to do:
“She’s done a lot to draw attention to herself that’s positive,” Santorum during an interview on ABC’s Top Line, adding that the former Republican vice presidential nominee has “done some things that, you know, certainly are going to cause her to have to do some explaining if she runs for president.”
Santorum does not elaborate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the Mall of America in Minnesota, a story is born: Man arrested for throwing tomatoes at Sarah Palin, police say. He missed and hit a policeman. Sarah went on to sign books for 1500 fans.
The tomato and approval ratings stories converge at the LA Times:
Sarah Palin just as popular as Barack Obama? Polls say you betcha:
Are Americans who want to throw rotten tomatoes at Sarah Palin slowly becoming the minority, while the number of people who want to throw them at President Obama is noticeably increasing?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At Facebook, Palin finds something to agree with the administration about:
I commend Interior Secretary Salazar’s decision today to conditionally approve drilling at three exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska; it’s a decision that’s been a long time coming. The area north of the Arctic Circle contains some of the world’s richest oil and gas reserves. U.S. Geological Survey researchers estimate that it contains 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil.
The international community recognizes the potential of Arctic off-shore drilling; it’s about time our government allowed us to compete with them by developing these rich reserves in an environmentally responsible way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From HotAir:
Video: Chris Matthews aghast that Palin doesn’t write her own material:
Her use of ghostwriters is a minor preoccupation of Matthews’, dating back to when she first got her book deal and he seemed to express surprise that she can read. Why this bugs him so much when virtually every other major politician uses ghostwriters on their books and speeches (Democratic royalty included) is beyond me unless he really does believe that Palin, a former governor, is semi-literate and committing some type of “extra” deception.
December 8
Politico reports: Palin says Mike Huckabee made “horrible decision” on granting clemency in 200 to Maurice Clemmons, who killed four police officers at a coffee shop in Seattle.
“It was a bad decision obviously, but my heart goes out to Huckabee,” the former Alaska governor said of her potential 2012 GOP presidential rival during an interview Monday with conservative radio host Lars Larson. “I love him, and I feel bad for him to be in this position. But I feel even worse for the victims’ families in this situation.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HotAir again: Audio: Palin hinting at 3rd-party run?
Because she doesn’t rule it out in an interview with Lars Larson.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Salt Lake City, 830 people show up at Costco for a Going Rogue book signing at noon. Dozens have spent the night in line, braving the coldest temperatures of the year.
December 9
The Washington Post publishes an op-ed by Palin:
Copenhagen’s political science:
With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue …
The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won’t change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse. …
The e-mails reveal that leading climate “experts” deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Wayward Tomato becomes The Tomato Heard Round the World as Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald reports: Tomato thrown at Sarah Palin.
At MSNBC, Al Gore rebuts Palin’s climate change claims. Responding to Palin’s Washington Post op-ed, Gore hits back during an interview with Andrea Mitchell, saying “global warming is not a political issue but a moral one” — unintentionally underscoring Palin’s claim that manmade climate change is actually “doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood.”
Palin says she’s seen “the impact of changing weather patterns,” but “while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes.”
Gore says the scientific community has worked on this for 20 years (I guess the 20 years since the press plied the Kool-Aid of The Coming Ice Age). “It’s a principle in physics,” he told Mitchell. “It’s like gravity, it exists.”
Palin takes to her Facebook page late that night to respond to Gore:
Perhaps he’s right. Climate change is like gravity — a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it. However, he’s wrong in calling me a “denier.” As I noted in my op-ed above and in my original Facebook post on Climategate, I have never denied the existence of climate change. I just don’t think we can primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes.
Most interesting in this is the role Palin is playing — as she did with the health care death panels — exposing a mainstream media vacuum and forcing a response from the left. A stupid and irrelevant nobody from nowhere. How cool is that?
When the left responds by the Alinsky tactic of marginalizing her — as Gore tries to do with misrepresenting her position and calling her a “denier” (odd religious tones to that), she makes her case directly to the American people to remind them of her actual words.
And just as once upon a time she processed fish in Alaska, she guts Gore’s red herring and focuses back on the real problem: the dangerous collusion of politics and science — and financial gain — which caused scientists to dump research, covering up in order to keep the Church of Climate Change in business.
Palin even uses an Alinsky tactic — though I think it’s just instinctive — at the close of her Facebook, turning his own words back on him:
Vice President Gore, the Climategate scandal exists. You might even say that it’s sort of like gravity: you simply can’t deny it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Politico reports: Glenn Beck tells Barbara Walters he hasn’t yet made up his mind about Sarah Palin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Within hours of his Copenhagen speech, USA Today reports: Surprise! Palin likes Obama’s Nobel speech.
Maybe because for once it wasn’t ripping America? And because with the irony of receiving a Peace Prize while deploying 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he had to carefully define the role of war in establishing and keeping peace?
“I liked what he said,” Palin told us in a phone interview. “I talked too in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times. … Of course, war is the last thing I believe any American wants to engage in, but it’s necessary. We have to stop these terrorists. …
Conservatives shouldn’t worry. Palin isn’t going soft on Obama. The former Alaska governor went on to say that former president George W. Bush “did a great job of reminding Americans every single day that he was in office” of the lessons of the 9/11 attacks. “By the way, I’d like to see President Obama follow more closely in the footsteps of George Bush and his passion for keeping the homeland safe,” Palin added.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laura Ingraham is hosting an auction of the red jacket Palin sports on the cover of Going Rogue. All proceeds go to benefit The Wounded Warrior Project and The Fisher House. Auction ends Dec 18, 2009, 8:00 AM PST. Current bid is $36,700.
December 10
Going Rogue to be released in electronic form Dec. 26.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Couer d’Alene, Idaho, 900 turn out to greet Palin — many spending the night in sleeping bags in 9 degree chill.
The Going Rogue Lower 48 book tour ends where it all began for Sarah — in Sandpoint, Idaho, the town of her birth (1964).
December 11
USA Today’s comprehensive and refreshingly balanced interview: Sarah Palin wraps up book tour … plans to be key player in 2010.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a “surprise” appearance on the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, Palin walks on stage to hear William Shatner reading from Going Rogue. Turning the tables, she reads some silly stuff from Shatner’s autobiography Up Till Now. Sarah at her poised and humorous best, a must-watch video.
December 13
Palin wraps up her Going Rogue book tour at two Alaska Air Force bases, then heads home with her family for Christmas.
December 14
Investors Business Daily sides with Palin: Palin vs. Gore: Oceans Apart
~~~~~~~~~~
Palin schedules a second February 8 speech in Redding, CA, for the timber industry. Her first one sold out in 36 hours after it was announced.
~~~~~~~~~~
Palin — along with Sean Hannity, Michele Malkin, Laura Ingraham, and Kevin Jackson — will speak at the National Conservative Symposium in San Antonio, TX, January 22-24.
~~~~~~~~~~
Palin continues to be the woman Liberal Ol’ Boys love to hate — with recent ad-hominems from Christopher Hitchens, John Kerry, and Roseanne Barr. Yeah, I know Barr’s not a guy, but you can’t help but notice that women attacking Palin start to look a lot like the Liberal Ol’ Boys.
~~~~~~~~~~
In between PalinTrackers, keep up with Palin’s political commentary at Facebook — where she now has 1,105,726 supporters.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member