Salon.com > Going Rogue

How Palin’s PAC spends its money

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:02:00 +0000

Some Republicans -- if not the elected ones, then certainly plenty of the voters -- see former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the savior of their party. So far, though, she doesn't seem to be doing much on that score.

In the last half of 2009, Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, gave only $43,000 to Republican candidates for federal office. That money was spread over more than a dozen people.

By contrast, National Journal's Reid Wilson notes, SarahPAC spent almost $48,000 buying copies of Palin's memoir "Going Rogue." The books, purchased from the publisher, were used as thank-you gifts for donors.

Update: A little more detail from ABC News' Blotter, including more money spent -- their report has $63,000 spent on the books, along with $8,000 on bookmarks and $20,000 to Palin's publisher, apparently to cover the cost of sending a photographer and another aide on her book tour.

The Palin scoop that wasn’t

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:26:00 +0000

"Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime" comes out next week. Written by Time's Mark Halperin and New York's John Heilemann, it's supposed to be perhaps the big literary summary of the 2008 presidential election. And it's already getting some press, including a feature on "60 Minutes" this weekend. But some of the press it's gotten so far seems, well, less than deserved.

The big detail from the book that's gotten attention this week is a story about Sarah Palin and her preparation for the vice-presidential debate, against Joe Biden. The press release for the "60 Minutes" story -- published on Drudge, who got the book and this story covered elsewhere as a result -- tells the story this way:

Palin had a reflexive tendency to refer to Biden as “O’Biden,” says [Steve Schmidt, former chief campaign strategist for John McCain], something that had to be fixed before the debate. He says others in the campaign came up with a solution. “It was multiple people -- and I wasn't one of them-- who all said at the same time, ‘Just say, Can I call you Joe,’ which she did.” Schmidt says he took over the prepping, simplified it, and says she “more than held her own” in the debate. But not without one “O’Biden” slip on national television.

Palin’s book sales top one million

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:01:00 +0000

From the moment it was announced, it was clear that Sarah Palin's memoir "Going Rogue" would be a bestseller. But the size of the book's success is still pretty amazing: According to Greg Sargent, more than one million copies have now been sold. That's after a first week in which 700,000 were bought.

These are, to put it mildly, huge numbers in today's publishing industry. That said, though, there's no reason to believe Palin's success at the cash register can transfer into success at the ballot box -- to expand on one observation Sargent made, what the sales figures really show is that she's become a media star.

The Annie Oakley of American politics

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Sarah Palin’s ascent, not unlike Barack Obama’s, is an American story. The hockey mom becomes the mayor who becomes the governor who becomes the national candidate. She’s a folkloric character: Annie Oakley, Horatio Alger and Gatsby in one. Even her florid self-mythologizing is an accepted cultural tradition. She is the girl from the sticks who made it big. She is a pragmatic, can-do feminist who’s convinced, as she told Oprah, that an American woman can have it all but that “some things might have to be put on the back burner.” Say what you want about Palin or her positions (and, in the past, I have), it takes scrappiness and guts to strike back at the old-boys' network that anointed you by publishing a book, so soon after the campaign, detailing your frustrations and disillusionments. We might want to take a long breath before discounting her. As Gwen Ifill recently said on "This Week": “You can not underestimate the degree that women will be drawn to her story.” We don’t hear many real-life fairy-tales of American female success, which makes the few that exist intrinsically compelling.

Democrat goes rogue, declares Palin’s book “great”!

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:20:00 +0000

Now hold your horses, you snarky, lefty, NPR-listening, New York Times-subscribing readers of Salon. I haven't jumped ship to declare Sarah Palin herself "great." I'm from California, after all; I am not a creationist, I am not pro-life, I have never shot a moose. Nor is my culinary specialty an Alaskan dish called "moose chili." Here on the Left Coast, along with our hummus, we prefer "turkey chili," which is perhaps less gamey and lower in fat but in the end, I ask you, is it really more humane? (Who killed the turkey? Was it a person or a corporation? This Trader Joe's we speak of -- is he union? Is his name actually "Joe"? And what is his relation to Big Oil's manipulation of the rising price of Bristol Bay canned fishery salmon to 27 cents a pound?) These are the complexities one ponders at night while falling asleep under the gristly if at times oddly tasty caribou stew that is Sarah Palin's new 400-plus-page memoir.

“Get your pit bull on!”

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:20:00 +0000

Sarah Palin fans began gathering late Monday night for a book signing that wouldn't begin until 6 o'clock Tuesday evening. The signing fell during Michigan's two most sacred weeks -- firearm deer season. So Ken Bellhorn left his hunting camp at 1 a.m., and showed up at the Barnes & Noble in Woodland Mall still dressed in an orange camo jacket, a John Deere T-shirt, and hunting boots. He got there early enough to claim one of the 940 wristbands that guaranteed him an autographed copy.

"I already shot a small buck, but this'll be a bigger trophy," said Bellhorn, who was laid off last year from his job at a plastics firm that supplies the auto industry, and has spent some of his free time attending tea party rallies. "I think when Reagan was in office, he saved us from ourselves, and I think she's got the character and the morals to do the same thing."

Sarah Palin seemed to have an affinity with Greater Grand Rapids that she may not find anywhere else on her 31-city tour. West Michigan fits both sides of the Palin persona -- the antiabortion creationist and the moose-skinning hockey mom. It's a northern exclave of the Bible Belt, with one of the highest churchgoing rates in the nation. But unlike the rest of the Bible Belt, it's a place of deep snowfalls, ice rinks and bars with more Ski-Doos than pickups parked outside on a January night.

McCain defends former aides from Palin’s criticism

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:40:00 +0000

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been facing a conundrum lately: Sarah Palin's new book is filled with explicit criticism of his campaign staff, and in some cases even implicit criticism of him personally. But it wouldn't look good for him to lock horns with her publicly, and the Republican base clearly favors Palin anyway. Last week, McCain reportedly asked former senior staffers not to publicly respond to her charges.

On Wednesday, though, McCain gave an interview to Reuters in which he stepped up to defend the men and women who'd worked for him who are now being slammed by Palin.

“Going Rogue” — the shorter version

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:18:00 +0000

Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue," finally goes on sale today, after already producing an avalanche of criticism worthy of Proust. (Rush Limbaugh proclaims it "one of the most substantive policy books I've read.")

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

Palin’s book goes rogue on the facts

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time.

Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush -- a package she seemed to support at the time.

A look at some of her statements in "Going Rogue," obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its release Tuesday:

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PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.

Claim in Palin’s book already disputed

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:25:00 +0000

It wasn't hard to predict that Sarah Palin's forthcoming memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," would feature some dubious claims, including ones that would be disputed and even debunked pretty quickly. It is, however, a little surprising to see that one assertion Palin reportedly makes in the book has been challenged days before the book is set to be released, and while it's still under an embargo.

The Associated Press managed to obtain a copy of "Going Rogue," and published a glimpse into some of what the former Alaska governor's book contains on Thursday. One of the things the AP noted was that Palin discussed $500,000 in legal fees she says she's faced recently, and that she claims about one-tenth of that sum was the result of a bill she got from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, which wanted her to pay for having vetted her to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

"She said when she asked the McCain campaign if it would help her financially, she was told McCain's camp would have paid all the bills if he'd won; since he lost, the vetting legal bills were her responsibility," the AP reports.

Palin’s “Going Rogue” tour will stick to friendly territory

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:20:00 +0000

The itinerary for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s much anticipated “Going Rogue” book tour has some glaring omissions: The liberal bastions of New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle have all been snubbed. Instead, Palin has opted to visit a group of 25 smaller cities in the heart of what she might call “real America,” including Birmingham, Ala., Roanoke, Va. and Fort Wayne, Ind.

The tour kicks off in Grand Rapids, Mich. The choice of starting point has a special significance for Palin, given the fact that it was her outspoken criticism of the McCain campaign’s decision to pull out of the state that set her decisively on the path toward “going rogue” in the first place.

The secret diary of Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:24:00 +0000

Lynn Vincent made headlines when she was selected as the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin's soon-to-be-bestselling memoir, "Going Rogue." As an editor at the Christian World magazine, Vincent has railed against abortion rights, gay marriage and the theory of evolution. She is also the coauthor of the book "Donkey Cons," which purports to prove, among other claims, "how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy were elected with the help of the mob." Her coauthor on that book, Robert Stacey McCain (no relation to John McCain) has spoken out against interracial marriage.

Salon recently obtained this private diary, which we publish here in excerpted form.

July 30

I'm standing in a conference room at the Hotel Del, when in she walks. I know Danny (and a thousand others) are going to ask me what it was like to finally meet her. In a word: weird. She's shorter than I thought she'd be, her head is larger, but her features are so familiar that staring at her is like déjà vu.

“Going Rouge: An American Nightmare”

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:30:00 +0000

It seems former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's book will have a little competition, and from the moment it's released, no less. Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Story," is set to be released on Nov. 17. On the same day, a small publishing house, OR Books, will be releasing "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin -- An American Nightmare." As you might imagine, it's not going to portray the former governor in a very flattering light.

The book is being edited by two editors from the Nation, Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, and is being released in a somewhat unconventional manner -- at first, it's only going to be available through the publisher, either as an e-book or a print-on-demand order.