Sarah Palin’s Quixotic Quest for Relevance

By Walter Brasch

      She’s back and tightly holding Donald Trump’s coattails.

      That’s right, Sarah Palin, having again found the media spotlight, is casting her shadow across the more thoughtful conservatives.

      This past week she declared her undying love and support of Trump’s attempt to seize the presidency from the more experienced and knowledgeable candidates in the Democratic, Republican, and Green parties, and is blathering her way throughout Iowa, New Hampshire, and several early primary states to stir up Trump’s far-right base.

      At a media circus press conference this past week in Ames, Iowa, Palin gave the far-right wing goose bumps of excitement with her opening declaration, “Looking around at all of you, you hard working Iowa families, you farm families and teachers and teamsters and cops and cooks, you rock and rollers and holy rollers!”  And then she asked the crowd, “Are you ready for the leader to make America great again?” Her question echoed that of Trump, and brought a flushed frenzy to the target audience. The question also had undertones of stating that the United States was not great, was not the world leader in numerous areas and, to the far-right’s belief, not a world leader in waging war, something the Republicans have become adept at and known for.

      Palin’s 20-minute endorsement, filled with a “you betcha” here and a “Hallelujah!” there, rambled on, attacking President Obama, who isn’t running, while avoiding anything about those who are climbing in the polls and about to catch the man who, until he declared his candidacy for president, liked being known as The Donald.

      Palin’s endorsement may have been because she was looking to cement an irrational possibility to be a part of a Trump administration. Several months earlier, she had declared, to the amusement of anyone who ever studied science and energy, “I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby, oil and gas and minerals, those things that God has dumped on this part of the earth for mankind’s use, instead of relying on unfriendly foreign nations for us to import their resource.”  Why she wanted to run the Department of Energy was clear—she wanted to be the one to ride it into extinction.

      But the Tea Party darling may have endorsed Trump not because of any ideological similarities, as both proclaimed, but because she needs media exposure. Sen. John McCain and some delusional advisors had plucked Palin out of Alaskan obscurity to be the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate in 2008. On a full-time campaign, she had become a part-time governor. After the McCain-Palin combination failed to land many blows on the Obama-Biden ticket, and was soundly defeated, Palin decided that Alaska wasn’t big enough for her. She resigned the governorship half-way through her first term, wrote a best-selling book that only the extreme right-wing thought was well-written, began commanding $100,000 for speaking fees, and was courted by, and signed by, Fox News as a commentator.

      However, even Fox News, which has corralled most of the conservative loons to be commentators, tired of having to deal with Palin’s errors, outrageous observations, and falling ratings. Palin’s and Fox’s PR machines claimed the divorce was amicable. 

With her popularity fading, her speaking engagements slowing down, and media coverage of her family’s problems rising, Palin needed a platform to restore her reality show road show. That media glow lays in the endorsement of the narcissistic and bombastic billionaire front runner whose three marriages and four bankruptcies haven’t reduced his appeal to the Republicans’ family values base.

      It’s important that Palin get off the stage so that the conservatives who actually know what they’re talking about can command some of the media attention that has been focused upon Trumpian rhetoric and not substance.

New Hampshire or Bus: Sarah's No-Campaign Campaign Tour

By Walter Brasch

            Speeding along city streets, going from somewhere to somewhere else, was the Sarah Palin "One Nation I'm Not Running for Anything But Follow Me Anyhow" bus chase.

            Following her were about two dozen reporters and photographers from the national news media, and now and then some local news teams, many of whom violated traffic laws in order to keep the Palin Convoy in sight.

The news media told others how much they were suffering. Sarah wouldn't tell them where she was going. She didn't issue press releases. She wouldn't give them interviews when they wanted. The media had to call, text, and radio each other just to get information. They couldn't even get proper bathroom breaks because they had to chase that danged bus and the two Sarah SUV escorts. They believed their lives were more like those of combat correspondents under heavy incoming fire, and not the celebrity-chasing paparazzi they had become.

What little information they got, they had to go to Facebook and Twitter, where Team Sarah posted nightly updates. And, oh yeah, if you have a few bucks, please contribute to Sarah PAC, which was funding the trip.

            On the second day, 10-year-old Piper Palin had sarcastically told a photographer, "Thanks for ruining our vacation." Of course, it wasn't the media who "ruined" what Piper thought was a family vacation. Sarah Palin's own website claimed the purpose of the tour was "part of our new campaign to educate and energize Americans about our nation's founding principles, in order to promote the Fundamental Restoration of America." To "promote" that education campaign, Piper's mother commissioned a luxury bus, and wrapped it in a professionally-created design, complete with a Sarah Palin signature larger than anything John Hancock could have written. Since Mother Sarah always emerged from the bus wearing ready-for-prime-time campaign makeup and "glad-to-meet-ya-but-I'm-not-really-running" conservative suits, it was questionable just whose vacation it was.

              In Washington, D.C., on Memorial Day, Sarah put on a helmet, black leather jacket and, still wearing high heels, jumped onto the back of a Harley, and seized the spotlight from thousands of Rolling Thunder bikers who were in the capital to honor POWs and MIAs. Sarah was in the capital to honor Sarah.

            In the nation's capital, she wore a large cross. In New York City, the fundamentalist half-governor whose church believes that Jews will never get to heaven unless they are baptized as Christians, wore a Star of David.

            At Fort McHenry, Mt. Vernon, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and several other historic sites on her six-day erratic trip up the eastern seaboard, she stopped for minutes here, minutes there, in an attention-deficit span of pseudo-patriotism, long enough to make sure the media saw her, that there was ample opportunity for photo-ops, and then moved on. Where? No one really knew. It was as freewheeling as her own political style.

At Gettysburg, she stayed long enough to take advantage of numerous photo-ops. In New York, the media breathlessly told us about Sarah and newly-incarnated birther Donald Trump having pizza in a restaurant on Times Square.

            On I-90, near Worcester, Mass., her caravan rolled into a storm, just behind a tornado, not stopping for either their own safety or to help those affected by severe damage from the tornado.

            In New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney was announcing his campaign for the presidency, Sarah managed to have her own show about five miles away, drawing the national media to her star power, and then claimed she didn't mean to upstage Romney. It was just an accident, she said in the state where the nation's first primary for the 2012 presidential election will be held.

            At Ellis Island, she misinterpreted potential immigration law. In an interview with Fox News reporter Greta van Susteren, the only reporter allowed on the bus, Sarah mangled the truth about Social Security, the Obama stimulus plan, and the foreign aid package to Egypt.   

In Boston, she reinvented history and complained about "gotcha" journalism. You know, like the "gotcha" question Katie Couric asked in 2008 about what she read. This "gotcha" had come from a Boston reporter who had thrown an even easier puff ball—"What did you learn in Massachusetts and what did you take away from it?" Apparently, she didn't learn much. Instead of spending enough time in Boston to learn about America's revolution, she informed the nation that a bell-clanging Paul Revere went out to warn the British not to mess with America's right to bear arms—or something to that effect. When historians politely disagreed with her curious interpretation of history, she steadfastly maintained she knew American history, and that everyone—including, apparently, Paul Revere's own notes and letters— was wrong. 

Some of the Sarah Zealots even tried to manipulate information in Wikipedia to parrot what Sarah believed was the reason for Paul Revere's ride, thus giving revisionist history an entirely new dimension.

            Although Sarah thought the media were into "gotcha journalism," the truth is that the wily politician, who tiptoed into broadcast journalism after college, now assisted by a media-savvy campaign staff, managed to do everything right to manipulate the mass media to give her more coverage than a Puritan in a clothing factory.

Her handling of the media was the ultimate "gotcha."

You betcha, Sarah.

           

            [Walter Brasch, a journalist for more than 40 years, has reported on almost every presidential campaign since 1968. His latest book is Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution, available at amazon.com]