Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue,"
Do you want to read it? Of course not. So we've compiled the key elements to the book so you can know what everyone's talking about without enduring 413 pages of Palin-isms -- or shelling out $30 for a book.
So ... what, exactly, is the book about?
Agenda No. 1, apparently: Settle old scores
The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani wrote that Palin spends much of the book lashing out at the McCain campaign -- for being too slow in addressing the economic collapse, too easy on its rival, and too disorganized -- and laying principal blame for its failures on Steve Schmidt, McCain's chief campaign strategist and one of the people responsible for choosing Palin as a running mate. She largely blames the McCain staff for all the miscues of 2008, but rather than granular details of policy disagreements or communication problems, she's not above the cheap shot.
At one point, Palin recounts (via Politico), Schmidt told her to get a nutritionist. "As he lectured, I looked at his rotund physique and noted that he used nicotine to keep his own cognitive connections humming along."
On the loyalty of Nicolle Wallace, McCain spokesperson and former Bush official: "I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn't have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general."
Wallace also is painted as a hoity-toity Beltway mean girl. According to Politico, she writes about Wallace snobbishly going through her wardrobe in Palin's Alaskan bedroom. "No ... no ... no [Wallace] said as she slid each garment aside on its hangar." The clothes, Wallace claimed, were not appropriate for a vice-presidential nominee -- and it was Wallace, according to the book, who made the decision to purchase those costly, controversial designer clothes for the Palins.
Then, cleverly, Palin uses Wallace to smear CBS's Katie Couric (whose devastating interview with Palin created a damaging media narrative). According to Palin: "'[Couric] just has such low self-esteem,' Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. 'She just feels she can't trust anybody.'"
Agenda 2: Bolster her folksy image
Palin also uses the book to paint herself as a woman of the people, whose ignorance about world affairs is no impediment to her ambitions (because "there's no better training ground for politics than motherhood"). She later argues that her family-budgeting skills and belief in creationism made her into a "much needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington D.C."
According to the Washington Post, Palin goes to considerable length to assert her religious faith. On the campaign trail, she writes, she even took a call from controversial Pastor Rick Warren while in the shower: "I would never turn down prayer even with limited hours in a campaign day, standing in a few inches of water with a shower curtain for a wardrobe. You do what you've got to do."
Also, the Los Angeles Times notes that, unlike many other celebrity memoirists, Palin doesn't acknowledge her "collaborator" until late in her acknowledgments (after five HarperCollins editors and before "everyone who values good customer service").
Agenda 3: Lay the groundwork for . . .
The NYT's Kakutani believes the the book is a "calculated attempt to position -- for 2012." Other politicos and talking heads seem to agree. Will it work? Only time will tell.
But if she does enter political life again, the book has a litany of blurbs and bloopers she'll have to live down. Many media outlets have combed through the book to extract some of its most noteworthy or bizarre passages. Among the best that have popped up:
But perhaps the book's bigger buzz has been its inaccuracies. The Associated Press published a thorough summary of them (a project that Palin dismissed on her Facebook page as "opposition research," claiming that reporters would be better off fact-checking "Pelosi's health care takeover costs"). Among the AP's finds:
Elsewhere:
And, as the book enters wider circulation, we're sure there will be more. Let us know in the Comments section if you come across a great blooper we've missed.
WASHINGTON -- Think Stephen Colbert was impressed by Sarah Palin's speech to Tea Party Nation and her, ahem, handy way of remembering her talking points? Think again:
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WASHINGTON -- Apparently, Democrats weren't exactly terrified by Sarah Palin's speech to Tea Party Nation this weekend. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- which, strictly speaking, has very little to do with Palin, an ex-governor who might or might not run for president -- launched a new online contest Monday designed to focus even more attention on the speech. (Actually, though Palin isn't running for Senate, the committee has often used her as a foil, asking whether GOP Senate candidates want her support.)
"Did you read about last weekend's 'tea party' convention in Nashville?" the committee asked in an e-mail sent to supporters Monday morning. "Attendees paid $549 apiece for a weekend of activism and education capped by the main attraction: a speech by everybody's favorite half-term former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin. For her efforts, Palin received more than $100,000 in speaking fees -- and the adoration of legions of fans. In honor of the tea party convention, we came up with a way for you to tell us what you think she's saying."
The e-mail links to a DSCC Web page where you can draw on, and type text into, a photo of Palin. "Feel free to share what you've made with your friends," the DSCC says. That's where it's easy to imagine something going wrong here; right-wing blogs and Fox News made a lot of noise about a MoveOn.org contest to create ads about George W. Bush, in which one entry appeared to compare him to Hitler. DSCC aides say they're not worried about any inappropriate content with the Palin contest, though, because they'll screen the entries before posting a selection of their favorites.
Take a look at the blank canvas the DSCC provides here:
Although former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the headlining act at this weekend’s National Tea Party Convention, the guy with the costumes sometimes threatened to steal the show.
William Temple, 59, came to the inaugural event in Nashville armed with a wardrobe of period dress. On each of the three days of the confab, the ex-Secret Service agent strutted the halls of the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center tricked out in a different 17th or 18th century getup, including kilts, leggings and tricorn hats.
Due to his Founding Fathers flair, the Georgia native was a favorite with the 120 or so members of the international press in town to cover the event; all weekend reporters flocked to Temple’s side while he delivered his bombastic big government jeremiads. By Saturday evening, he’d become the conference’s de facto mascot.
"I am not for the Republican Party. When they send me their documents, I tear them up and throw them in the trash," Temple thundered to reporters on the conference’s first day. "I pick individual candidates now based on whether or not they’ll support the Constitution."
Even though a majority of the 600 conventioneers on hand for Tea Party Nation’s high-priced event seemed to echo Temple’s independent ideology, the costumed crusader was still a bit out of sync with his fellows. This theatrical brand of tea partying was what originally put the movement on the map. But ironically the bombast was mostly absent from this weekend’s conference. Instead of rowdy grass-roots upstarts, the event was attended by a mild pack of mostly white, middle-aged and polite men and women.
But the sedate nature of the conference shouldn’t be taken as a sign the tea party phenomenon is fading. The calm tone reflected an effort by event organizers Judson Phillips and Mark Skoda to reposition the movement as a legitimate political force.
“Let’s not be naive here, the notion of holding up signs and simply responding with emotion does not get people elected,” Skoda told reporters.
Throughout the weekend, Tea Party Nation tried to present the image of an older and wiser movement, one of a tea party that’s moved beyond demonstration alone and is ready for constructive activism. As part of this message, organizers continuously urged unity, telling attendees that fragmentation stands in the way of electing candidates who support a truly conservative agenda.
It's undeniable that the Nashville event itself created a schism within the wider tea party world. Purists say AstroTurf has edged out the grass-roots spirit, and accuse Phillips and other organizers of buddying up to the GOP establishment for personal gain. Some of the event’s planner’s harshest critics are former Tea Party Nation volunteers.
“I think the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be,” conservative blogger Erick Erickson recently wrote on RedState.com after appraising the fallout within Phillips’ group.
And Phillips' effort to present a kinder, gentler face to the movement was set back a bit by opening speaker Tom Tancredo, best known for strident opposition to illegal immigration. According to Tancredo, "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama."
After Tancredo's speech, Phillips and Skoda split over whether it was helpful to the cause. Phillips praised it to CNN. "Tom Tancredo gave a fantastic speech last night. I think he is an amazing politician ... The word 'socialist' is a word you don't want to be labeled with in the American political system. It's got a lot of negative connotations, but it also has a very specific political meaning. It refers to a specific political ideology. I think it is very clear that that is the political ideology of Barack Obama." But Skoda told the cable news network Tancredo's message "doesn't further the dialogue."
By contrast, Sarah Palin's often-jeering tone at Saturday's dinner almost seemed moderate.
After two days of lead-up, the conventioneers were primed for Palin’s speech, lining up outside the banquet hall on Saturday evening hours before the event. When the dinner began, the 600 original attendees were joined by an additional 500 guests who shelled out $349 for a seat and a dinner of lobster and filet mignon.
First Phillips took the stage, and again took the opportunity to distance the movement from its most strident adherents. “People say the tea party movement started with frustration and anger, and a lot of it is true. A year ago, at our tea party rallies, there was frustration and anger,” he said. “But at this convention, it’s not frustration, it’s not anger, it’s optimism. We know we can change America.”
Then right-wing agitator Andrew Breitbart introduced Palin, noting he had long yearned to meet her. He paused and added, "A man can have his fantasy."
Meeting Palin appeared to have been a lot of tea partiers' fantasy. Her comments were often interrupted by standing ovations from ecstatic conventioneers more than willing to break into a “Run, Sarah, run” chant at any moment.
But Palin’s speech wasn’t as much a direct tea party call-to-arms as a 50-minute test run of campaign material; with her characteristic homespun sarcasm, the former governor used her podium time to deride the “Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda,” a policy she claimed will leave the country “less secure, more in debt, and more under the thumb of big government.”
She targeted the Obama administration on all fronts. Beginning with national security, she lambasted the president’s response to the failed Christmas Day bombing and said it illustrated the same weak approach to terrorism that led to the 9/11 attacks.
“To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law,” Palin said above a roar of applause from the crowd.
On the home front, Palin criticized the $775 billion stimulus package for its lack of fiscal responsibility and told the crowd the president’s recent budget was “immoral” because it was “sticking our kids with the bill,” a line that garnered one of the evening’s loudest reactions from the banquet hall.
But Palin’s strongest encouragement for the movement specifically came in a rare question and answer session with a fawning Phillips following the speech. (Despite the softball questions, some bloggers charged after the event that Palin appeared to have to check her hand for answers.) When asked about the future of the tea party, the former governor was adamant the group represented “the future of politics.”
“The Republican Party would be really smart to try and absorb as much of the tea party movement as possible,” Palin said. “This is a beautiful movement because it is shaping the way politics are conducted. You’ve really got both party machines running scared.”
Palin’s answer was in keeping with the message event organizers had spread at the conference. Phillips and Skoda pressed home to attendees that Tea Party Nation was not for establishing a third party, but would rather use grass-roots momentum to drive the Republican Party to the right. Over the weekend the pair announced plans to form the nonprofit Ensuring Liberty Corp., and a related political action committee. The group will take corporate donations and give money to candidates that match the tea party’s principles.
It’s a move that not only represents the further organization of the tea party movement, but is another example of Phillips’ habit of steering grass-roots efforts into more mainstream directions while allegedly leaving other activists behind. Nothing illustrates that more than the rocky history of Tea Party Nation. According to former volunteers, Phillips was responsible for eschewing the group’s original grass-roots ethics in order to reposition the group as a national player.
By day a DUI lawyer in the nearby affluent enclave of Franklin, Tenn., Phillips was an organizer of two tea party rallies in early 2009 that drew considerable crowds to the Legislative Plaza in downtown Nashville. As the group -- then known as the Tennessee Tea Party -- gained traction, Phillips took aim at establishing a new brand, according to former supporters.
In April 2009, Phillips rechristened his group Tea Party Nation and went live with a social networking site envisioned as a conservative activist’s form of Facebook; the attorney also organized the outfit as a for-profit entity -- a move that raised concerns among the group’s faithful.
One of those individuals was Kevin Smith, the group’s webmaster. According to a lengthy blog post in January, Smith became disillusioned with the group not only after learning of the for-profit status, but also because of a lack of transparency regarding donated funds. When these qualms finally forced him to resign on April 24, Smith says Phillips turned ugly, accusing the former webmaster of trying to crash the group’s site and eventually threatening legal action. Since his exit, Smith says he’s realized Phillips has abandoned his activist roots for the Republican establishment.
“It’s become clear to me that Judson and his for-profit Tea Party Nation Corporation are at the forefront of the GOP’s process of hijacking the tea party movement,” Smith wrote in his blog post. “What began as cries for true liberty and a public showing of frustration with the big government policies of both Democrats and Republicans has now been co-opted by mainstream Republican demagogues determined to use this as their 2010 election platform.”
According to Smith, all of the original members of the local tea party group have since jumped ship. At least one other former volunteer, East Tennessee tea party organizer Anthony Shreeve, has also publicly denounced Tea Party Nation’s leadership. In an interview with Politico, Shreeve said, “the tea party movement is a grass-roots movement; it’s not a business,” and added that Phillips’ convention could be detrimental to the movement because “it’s a premature national initiative that doesn’t have the support of the majority of we the people.”
Although Phillips publicly denounced the whistle-blowers as apostates with an ax to grind, there was a considerable fallout from the schism. Tea Party Nation’s for-profit status and the outcry over ticket prices led to the pull-out of sponsors Tea Party Express, American Liberty Alliance and National Precinct Alliance. Reps. Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn canceled their convention appearances as well.
If the National Tea Party Convention was the second stage in the evolution of the movement for Tea Party Nation, Ensuring Liberty Corp. appears to be the next step. However, as the group rebrands and gets further way from the public hysteria of the original tea party events, it's likely to shed more of the support the movement has relied on for momentum up to this point.
The Gaylord Opryland was an odd locale as a training ground for future grass-roots revolutionaries. The resort is located about 10 miles from downtown Nashville, stranded out amid miles of parking lots, fast food outlets and discount motels.
On the inside, the complex is a conventioneer’s playground, well-stocked with elegant meeting space, restaurants, high-end boutiques and a trendy nightclub. The sprawling building is arranged around four massive atriums crowned with towering glass roofs; on the main floor indoor rivers snake past transplanted palm trees and terraced walkways.
Despite the event’s notoriety, the National Tea Party Convention took up only a small amount of the resort’s meeting space, sharing the area with a conference of woman bloggers.
WASHINGTON -- Sarah Palin may not be running for president. But would it be okay if she flirted with the idea publicly for a few years to help keep her Tea Party-loving fans tantalized by the idea? Oh, you betcha.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace the morning after her aggressive speech to the Tea Party Nation convention in Nashville, Palin didn't do anything to dispel the hopes and dreams of whatever small slice of the electorate still wants her to be in charge of America's nuclear launch codes.
"I would," she answered, when Wallace asked her if she'd run. "I would, if I believe that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family, certainly, I would do so." Wallace tried to get her to elaborate, and she did. Sort of. "It's gonna be, thankfully a lot of time to be able to make such a decision," she said, in trademark Palin syntax. "Right now I'm looking at, as I say, other potential candidates out there who are strong; they're in a position of having more information at their fingertips right now, so that the current events that we're talking about today..." Wallace cut her off, saying she certainly sounded like she was considering it.
"I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," she said. "I don't know if it's gonna be ever seeking a title, though. It may be just doing a darn good job as a reporter or covering some of the current events." (Which is funny, because in her Tea Party appearance, she mocked the "lamestream media," and earlier in the interview with Wallace, she joked that she wasn't very good at her job as a Fox News analyst because she had "no idea" how to handicap the current GOP field. "Well, fire me, then, Roger!" she chirped in an aside to the camera and to Fox News boss Roger Ailes.)
But Wallace pressed her again, saying she definitely wasn't closing the door to a campaign. "I won't close a door that perhaps could be open for me in the future," Palin said. "I don't want any American to ever close a door in their personal or their professional lives and put themselves in a box and say, 'Heck yeah, I'm gonna do that,' or, 'No way, I'm not gonna do that,' when we don't know what the future holds."
There's still something about the scattershot way Palin appears to be picking her schedule -- such a contrast from the kind of strategic, disciplined early work that usually needs to go into a successful presidential campaign -- that makes it seem unlikely she's doing anything more than seeking fame and fortune right now. But she acknowledged that she does have a handful of advisors e-mailing her briefings every morning on what's going on in politics and the world. Is that something other potential candidates might be doing? Golly, don't ask Sarah. "I have no idea how conventionally people do this, how they try to open a door that perhaps isn't even open, and if that involves having a group of advisors send 'em emails every morning, I don't know," she said. The briefings are making her a bit more up to date than she was before she ran for vice president, she said: "I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events."
One thing she does know -- whoever gets the Republican nomination should have no problem beating the guy who's in the White House now. Unless, that is, President Obama starts a war.
"Say he played the war card," she said, casually name-checking Pat Buchanan, whose column apparently inspired this bit of analysis. "Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided to really come out and do whatever he could do to support Israel -- which I'd like him to do. That changes the dynamics and what we can assume is gonna happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be elected."
It's not so much that Palin thinks Obama would declare war on the 17th most populous country in the world just to win reelection. It's more that if he did do something like that, it would give people second thoughts about his failed presidency.
"If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, 'Well I think he's tougher than he is today,'" she said. "And there wouldn't be as much passion to make sure that he doesn't serve another four years."
For some reason, she bracketed "serve" with air quotes, as if to say Obama wasn't really serving at all. Which is probably exactly what most of the people who want her to take him on in 2012 would say, anyway. Palin may or may not wind up running for president. But it'll certainly be more entertaining if she does.
Unless, of course, she wins.
Eric Hoffer didn't live to see Tea Party Nation, but I always think of his most famous quote when I'm forced to deal with it: ""Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
I'm not sure the Tea Party cause is a great one, but it's an influential one, and it degenerated into a racket lickety split, in less than a year. This weekend's gathering in Nashville splintered both the Tennessee and the national Tea Party movement, as local go-getter Judson Phillips set up the once-anticipated "convention" as his own for-profit business. We'll have a first-hand report from the racket that paid Sarah Palin more than $100,000 to speak Saturday night. But I can't help weighing in.
Wow. This was the Palin we saw at the 2008 Republican convention, the snarling pitbull in shimmery lipstick. I know journalists aren't supposed to use words like mean and dumb, but I can't help it. Palin is one of the meanest people on the public stage today. She wallows in it. She loves it! Also? Possibly one of the dumbest. But mean works, and so does dumb. And so do lies, and there were many mean, dumb lies in her speech.
How rich that she read her talk in a sing-song voice as she ripped Barack Obama for using a Teleprompter. Once she left the speech for the Q&A, she really went off-message, as well as nearly off-English. (Even though it looked like, at one point, she was reading answers off of her hand.) "They're not knowin what are we gonna do if we don't have Tea Party support" was one of my favorite head-scratchers, a great echo of "when Putin rears his head."
But it was also in her brief Q&A that she made one comment she might regret, if anyone in the Republican Party ever held her accountable. She told the crowd her husband Todd -- according to recently released emails, the non-elected former governor of Alaska -- is "much too independent" to be a Republican, because he's even "more conservative" than she is. What a great way to revisit the controversy over Todd's membership in the secessionist Alaska Independent Party! Remember how Palin dogged poor McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, trying to get him to denounce Salon's reporting on the Palins and AIP? She tried to get Schmidt to lie and say her husband checked the AIP box on voter forms mistakenly, and he refused. Now she's bragging her husband isn't a Republican because he's so "independent."
She lied about rejecting stimulus money for Alaska (apparently she rejected a small home-weatherization project, which as it is sounds kind of mean for the governor of Alaska.) She lied about Obama's position on terrorism and the Christmas Day would-be bomber. She mixed up Alaska and America at least once. It was hilarious to hear her denounce political "talk, talk, talk" and also brag about the job she did as governor, when in fact she quit that job to talk, talk, talk, for money, at wine shows and for-profit tea parties and of course for Fox News.
I have to say, I've been assuming Palin probably won't run for president, and that she quit her job as Alaska governor to cash in on her fame. I now feel pretty certain she's trying to do both. She's certainly looking like a grifter, and cashing in at the for-profit Tea Party Nation event, and taking questions from the increasingly despised Phillips, may hurt her politically. But it's now pretty clear to me that in all her narcissism, she thinks she can get rich and run for president at the same time. And who am I to say she can't, given the delusions of her right-wing supporters?
Say this for Rush Limbaugh's quest to poke his eye in the face of anyone being even a little bit politically correct: At least it seems to cover both sides of the aisle.
On Wednesday, Limbaugh commented on the apology White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made to the head of the Special Olympics for comments in which he called liberal activists "fucking retarded." Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose youngest son has Down Syndrome, called Tuesday for Emanuel to be fired, saying, "Just as we'd be appalled if any public figure of Rahm's stature ever used the 'N-word' or other such inappropriate language, Rahm's slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities -- and the people who love them -- is unacceptable, and it's heartbreaking."
Limbaugh doesn't appear to agree.
"I think the big news is the crack-up going on. Our political society is acting like some giant insult's taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards retards. I mean, these people, these liberal activists are kooks, they are loony tunes. I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel, it's in the news."
I wouldn't recommend holding your breath as you wait for Palin to call for Limbaugh's firing.
With his usual devotion to factual accuracy, Limbaugh got one detail of his story wrong, saying during the same segment that Emanuel had apologized to liberals for his comments. In fact, he hadn't; he only apologized to Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver. As of Tuesday, the White House was saying Shriver had accepted the apology; turns out he didn't, though. A spokeswoman for the Special Olympics told Ben Smith, "Tim can't do that. He can't accept an apology on behalf of all people with disabilities."
Limbaugh audio is below, with a hat-tip to Media Matters.
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