May 29, 2011
Sarah Palin is back in the news! She has announced an east-coast bus tour, has reportedly purchased a new $1.7M crib in Scottsdale, AZ., and her $1M self-authorized and approved documentary titled The Undefeated is set to hit Iowa next month followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada before being released to the rest of the nation.
Palin has mastered the media and shows great signs of using it to her advantage. She has not been blessed by the Republican establishment and sits behind Mitt Romney by only two points of the strongest potential contenders for the Republican nomination for 2012.
She continues to do things her way, unconventionally, which is what she sets out to prove with the release of The Undefeated. In Alaska, Palin was anything but conventional as a leader. Befriending Democrats, she tore down establishment Republicans including incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski. Immediately resuming duties as Governor, she sold a luxury-private jet purchased by Murkowski's administration, fired the Governor's personal chef, and decided to drive herself to work as Alaska's leader. Her refusal to play along party lines not only irritated stone-cold liberals, but outraged the establishment Republican playing field when she took on oil giants and returned money to the people of Alaska.
Her trend-setting style of unconventional fashion caught the eye of John McCain who used it to throw a curve-ball to the energy-pumped Obama campaign in 2008. Her presence proved to grow the size of McCain's rallies, gave her 70 million viewers during the VP debate with Joe Biden, and gave her a national name which has skyrocketed to out-power the recognition of her GOP would-be opponents this year including Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul.
As her popularity among conservatives seems to strengthen, her unpopularity among Democrats and establishment Republicans appears to hold strong. This makes her climb to electoral success an uphill battle, characterized by her critics as something she can't handle but portrayed by her supporters as something she loves.
Considering all, it would seem to be an almost-perfect climate for Palin's opponents to launch full-blown attacks on her credibility as well as her record. However; two highly-anticipated books which promised to expose Palin as a fly-by-night politician on a mission to serve herself were released this month, and seem to have fallen short in public interest.
Palin-flamethrower, Geoffrey Dunn of the Huffington Post released The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power May 10th and Frank Bailey, former Aide to Palin, teamed up with Palin-critic Jeanne Devon to release Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years on May 24th. Ardent opponents of Sarah Palin have been highly-anticipating these books which promised to tear down Palin's public image for the long-term.
Interestingly, Geoffrey Dunn's book has not even hit Amazon's top-100 list since its release; and after a week of media coverage including appearances on NBC, ABC's The View, Fox News, CNN, and many more, Frank Bailey's "memoir" disappointingly debuted at #40 and has already fallen to #75.
While reasonable voters notice that perhaps Americans are beginning to tire of the anti-Palin volume, others are sure to argue that Americans simply don't care about her at all, even though the latest headlines which seem to be tracking her every move impeccably could be enough to put that idea to rest.
One thing is sure for Palin as she moves toward making her 2012 decision. She enjoys the luxury of knowing she has been thoroughly vetted and scrutinized for the last two years. While anti-Palin readers have lined their ammunition up one year before a presidential campaign, her supporters are left wondering who is left in Alaska to interview. Because on the basis of Geoffrey Dunn's and Frank Bailey's accompanying Palin-bombs, what they've come up with so far doesn't seem to be effectively distinguishing the grassroots energy Sarah Palin has uniquely created and maintained.
