Palin Versus "Perky" Katie, and Palin Wins

Sometimes revenge is best served cold:

Sarah Palin beat Katie Couric in the ratings game Tuesday when the two women hosted competing morning shows. Palin, never one to hold punches, gloried in her dominance over “the ‘perky one.’”

“[F]rankly, I’m ecstatic we beat the ‘perky one,’” Palin emailed Zap2it, along with some glowing compliments for the “Today” show staff and cast.

Her problem was not with ABC, Palin made clear, just Couric, who was filling in as the host of “Good Morning America.”

“I wouldn’t have gone up against ABC’s vacationing Robin Roberts, because she’s such a good egg,” said Palin. “By the way, both Robin and Matt Lauer have traveled the long journey to Alaska and dealt with unglamorous, rugged conditions to see more of our world; they’ve shown respect for a more unconventional Americana lifestyle, and we appreciate that.”

The mainstream media reviews were pretty universally bad, but advertisers pay for ratings, not reviews. I'm guessing she'll be back.

Game On

The usually boring morning shows could get interesting for at least one day this week:

When news broke that Katie Couric will be filling in for Robin Roberts next week on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the country yawned. Or, at least we did, until we learned that NBC plans to pit “The Rogue Warrior” against “The Perky One”: Sarah Palin will be guest-hosting “Today” this Tuesday.

NBC’s decision to seat the former Alaska Governor-turned-multimedia star in their anchor chair will likely prove to be a fruitful one. Since coming onto the national scene in 2008, Palin has become one of the most charismatic figures in conservative America and will likely bring “Today” an entirely different demographic of viewers.

“I see this as a good opportunity to bring an independent, common-sense conservative perspective to NBC. We’re ‘going rogue’ and infiltrating some turf for a day,” Palin told Breitbart News.

You just know everyone will be scrambling for the ratings numbers as soon as their available.

Political Quote of the Day

From Sarah Palin:

“I I had to vote in South Carolina in order to keep this think going I’d vote for Newt.”

Not a ringing endorsement - more like Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos in 2008 that kept Hillary in the race longer than she might otherwise have.  However, I'm guessing Newt is quite pleased.  He was brilliant in the last debate, but I just don't know if what he said is how he's actually govern.  And, or course, there's still the issue of being able to beat Obama first.

Report: Chris Christie Will Endorse Romney Tonight

Herman Cain must be making the GOP establishment pretty nervous if they've got to trot Gov. Chris Christie out to endorse Romney tonight, but that's the report from Fox News. This is only going to make conservatives mad.

The GOP establishment should have learned from 2008 that conservatives will not get excited to turn out and work for RINOs.  Mitt Romney will not inspire conservatives and will likely lose to Obama next year.

ATTN:  Sarah Palin - if you're going to endorse someone who's not Mitt Romney, you better get on it before the GOP establishment sews this whole thing up.  You still have a shot at relevance.

Passings

Three stories of things passing:

• Steve Jobs - I was never a huge Apple fan, but like most of America and the world I did have some Apple products.  My daughter wanted a MacBook for college and over four years later it's still kicking.  Back in 2005 I bought the whole family iPods, back when they were a lot clunkier and not quite so slick.  My wife and kids got 4 gig iPod Minis, and I got a 20 gig classic iPod.  A couple of the minis are still working, though the battery life is not so great, and I still use the 20 gig model in quartet rehearsals to run our background tracks.  I've also used iTunes for years to manage my recorded music and burn CDs.  Bottom line, all of the Apple products I've used have worked as advertised without disappointment.  Jobs changed the world in his 56 years.  Not many can say that.  And an interesting side note - the nuts at Westboro Baptist announced they would protest Jobs' funeral.  They sent the announcement out on Twitter via an iPhone.
• Sarah Palin's Presidential Aspirations - All that ended officially yesterday, but in my opinion they ended the day she left her job as Alaska governor a year-and-a-half early.  Had she remained in the job for the entire term she would have been a natural candidate for president in 2012.  Leaving early allowed an image as a "quitter" to set in, and although she had good reasons for making her decision, that image wasn't going to change.  Also hurt by her announcement:  Tina Fey and Levi Johnston.  Fey was given a prestigious national humor award mainly because she could imitate Palin, but that part of her career is pretty much over, and Johnston can now go back to being the low-life he truly is.
• Hank Williams Jr. and ESPN - ESPN has formally fired Hank Williams Jr. for the crime of analogy.  Political correctness still reigns at ESPN and the NFL.  Williams claims his First Amendment rights were violated, but sadly, Williams doesn't know as much about the First Amendment as he probably should.  It doesn't apply in this situation.

Sarah Palin Makes It Official - She's Not Running

I've been saying for months that Palin would not get in the race.  In fact, I begged her not to.  Her candidacy would have been very divisive for the GOP and probably would have made for a long drawn out primary battle, resulting in a Mitt Romney win as conservatives were split among other candidates.

Today she made it official.  I just heard the statement and interview with Mark Levin, and she's out.  She's also ruled out any third party possibilities given that it would pretty much ensure the re-election of Obama.

According to her statement her plans are to work to elect good conservatives in offices all over the country, and I think that's really where her strength is.  She draws big crowds and has a lot of influence with many conservative voters.

It was the right call on her part, and will for 2012 be good for the GOP.

Barring a sudden change of heart by Rudy Giuliani, the GOP field is set.  We're going to have to be able to live with one of the current candidates as our challenger to Obama.

Christie and Palin, In or Out...NOW!

S.E. Cupp says it's time for the game playing to end.  Get in or get out and quit dragging things out:

It's happened. The build-up and anxiety over whether folks like Chris Christie and Sarah Palin are going to throw their hats in the ring for the GOP presidential primary has reached critical mass.

And now, the will-they-or-won't-they game has flipped from fun and energizing to damaging to the party. Christie and Palin now do conservatives more harm than good.

With the question marks still lingering in the ether, and pundits on both sides of the aisle still performing their daily trapeze act -- swinging back and forth between "yes, he's running" and "no, she isn't" -- the focus on Christie and Palin has taken valuable resources and attention away from the rest of the field.

Because of those question marks, conservatives haven't been able to invest fully in the candidates who are running. They haven't been able to imagine one of them as president. They've held back support, money and endorsements, because they still don't know that the field is settled.

Read the rest of it here.

When it comes to Christie the only thing I've ever heard him say is "I'm not running", so I'm not sure the speculation surrounding him is his fault. The real problem seems to be the people, many of them part of the establishment GOP, who insist on pushing for a Christie candidacy and keeping the speculation alive. They're practically begging him to get in, and he keeps saying "no". Somehow he's got to make it official.

Palin as offered several possible dates (including today) that she promised to give a final decision, but as each date approached she'd push it off again. I think she's just playing everybody and has no real plans to get in. It's getting awfully late to line up campaign cash and top quality staffers.

So, my advice to Republicans is to pick somebody from the existing field and back them until they win or drop out. And if they don't make the cut, plan on supporting whoever does, because it will take a unified GOP plus a lot of disenchanted independents and Dems to flush the Obama curse from the White House.

Anti-Palin Books Do About As Well As Anti-Iraq War Movies

El stinko:

Despite massive publicity, two new books chronicling the Sarah Palin soap opera -- The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by veteran political writer Joe McGinnis and Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs by Bristol Palin baby daddy Levi Johnston -- have gotten a lukewarm response from the buying public since their release on Tuesday. Hard sales numbers will not be available for a week but the rankings on Amazon and Barnes & Noble provide a good indication of consumer interest. The Rogue is ranked in the fifties on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Deer in the Headlights is hovering in the seven hundreds on Amazon and in the two hundreds on Barnes & Noble. Both books had weak pre-sale numbers as well with The Rogue in the high hundreds and Deer in the Headlights in the high thousands.

None of this means there's massive support for Sarah Palin out there, though when Palin's own book came out it was at the top of book sales lists and had people lining up to get it...especially if she was there to sign them. It could be that the Palin-mania days are over and the lack of interest in the new books means there's a lot of "meh" out there about her.

It appears that although she has very vocal opposition, they're not willing to part with their dollars to read books by her detractors.

If Sarah Palin Ever Wanted to Get In, Now's the Time to Do It

When Rick Perry announced his candidacy for president I assumed that would pretty much end any chance that Sarah Palin would run. They'd basically be competing for the same part of the conservative base and all her candidacy would do is open the door for Mitt Romney.

I'm not so sure about that anymore. Rick Perry has had three debate performances which have gone from mediocre to pretty bad. Many who supported him early on are having second thoughts, and pretty much all of those people hate Mitt Romney. If this keeps up, they're going to start looking for someone else.

The Christian Science Monitor has a piece on Palin which indicates there's still time for her to jump in...but not much:

First, Joe McGinniss’s tell-all book about her was slammed by the mainstream media (those coming to Palin’s defense included the New York Times and even liberal antagonist Keith Olbermann).

Now, a new national poll shows her trailing President Obama in a head-to-head matchup by just 5 points, 44 to 49 - this, after she had trailed him by more than 20 points for most of the year. That’s better than current GOP frontrunner Rick Perry, who trails the president 41 to 50 in the same poll.

According to the survey, Palin’s recent jump in support has come mostly from independents, who have lately been abandoning the president in droves. Still, she remains a controversial figure: 72 percent of Republicans and independents in the same survey also said they don’t actually think Palin should run.

And that remains the question: will she or won’t she? Palin recently told Fox News that she thinks there’s “still time” for candidates to get into the race, and that she’s “still considering” it. She repeatedly said she believed it would be an “unconventional” election year.

Palin did acknowledge that there are deadlines looming to get on the ballot in certain primary and caucus states. (Florida, for example, has a deadline of Oct. 31.)

The big problems with arriving at the dance this late will organization and money. She'd have to ramp up the state campaign organizations in a big hurry and that's not easy or cheap to do. A lot of the big fundraisers have made other commitments, and much of the top-tier political talent is already working for other candidates.

However, she has a history of proving people very wrong, and who knows, if there was ever a good time to get in, it's right now.

New York Times Praises....Sarah Palin??

Yes, even the writer couldn't believe he was writing this column:

So here is something I never thought I would write: a column about Sarah Palin’s ideas.

There was plenty of the usual Palin schtick — words that make clear that she is not speaking to everyone but to a particular strain of American: “The working men and women of this country, you got up off your couch, you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind, you got off the John Deere, and we took to the streets, and we took to the town halls, and we ended up at the ballot box.”

But when her throat was cleared at last, Ms. Palin had something considerably more substantive to say.

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

Read the whole thing here. He obviously took her seriously, which is something most in the media have never done.

Ann Coulter's Take on Palin

I think Ann Coulter reflects the opinion of a lot of us when it comes to Sarah Palin:

Palin vs. Coulter? -- If you like Sarah Palin because she drives liberals crazy, and you like Ann Coulter because she drives liberals crazy, you're now being asked to make a difficult decision. TheDC's Jeff Poor reports: "On Tuesday's 'The O'Reilly Factor,' substitute host Laura Ingraham asked conservative columnist Ann Coulter if Palin can maintain her status as a tea party favorite by stringing people along about her potential 2012 candidacy. 'Maybe not,' Coulter replied. 'Newt Gingrich carried it on for 15 years and I kind of think that might be what we're getting here, largely because of the polls...' Coulter pointed out that conservatives are reluctant to criticize Palin for fear of a backlash. 'Most Americans don't want Sarah Palin for president,' Coulter continued. 'But she's become sort of the Obama of the tea party. She’s just 'The One' to a certain segment of right-wingers... You know, we used to all love Sarah Palin — conservatives like me — for her enemies. I'm starting to dislike her because of her fans…" So, yeah. The next couple of days ought to be interesting. If you've got a bomb shelter or a panic room, might be a good idea to just lay low for a while.

I find that I quickly grow tired of people who have constant drama around them, and Palin is one of those people. I don't want her to run, and I want her to make it clear she's not running so we can stop the drama.

Palin: There's Room For More

Sarah Palin's big Iowa speech takes place today and as always she's creating more drama:

Sarah Palin tantalized supporters on the eve of her appearance at a tea party rally by telling reporters “there’s room for more” candidates in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. But she gave no hint as to whether she was talking about herself.

The former Alaska governor was mobbed by enthusiastic supporters who chanted, “Run, Sarah, run!” when she arrived at a Des Moines suburb Friday evening. Many had come hundreds or thousands of miles to attend Saturday rally in Indianola and many believe that Palin will become a candidate.

Aides have suggested that Palin will not make her intentions clear on Saturday and what she said Friday night did nothing to clarify the picture. Asked about the current field of candidates, she said she was happy with them, but added, “I think there’s room for more, though, because spirited debate and more competition will allow an even better discourse and more rigorous discourse that the public deserves.”

If she doesn't announce her candidacy today I think she really begins shedding support. People don't like too much drama, and drama seems to surround her. At some point people who might have supported her had she gotten in earlier will move on to other candidates and they won't come back.

74% of GOP Voters Don't Want Sarah Palin to Run for President

Count me among them (from a Fox News poll):

Should Palin Run?

All in all, most voters -- 74 percent -- think Palin should stay on the sidelines in 2012. Just 20 percent think she should run for president.

The groups most likely to support Palin running are white evangelical Christians (30 percent) and Tea Party members (28 percent). Still, majorities of those groups do not think she should run (62 percent and 66 percent respectively). In addition, 72 percent of conservatives, 71 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of independents think Palin should stay out.

Women (77 percent) are a bit more likely than men (71 percent) to say Palin should sit this one out.

This makes me think a Palin announcement would not have the effect on the race that I once feared.

The same poll has Rick Perry leading Mitt Romney 26%-18%. That double's Perry's support from the previous poll in August. Everybody else is in single digits.

Obama Requests Joint Session Speech at Same Moment as GOP CA Debate

Petty politics at its best.  Obama has requested to give a speech to a joint session of Congress at exactly the same moment the GOP is scheduled to debate at the Reagan Library.  This will be Rick Perry's first debate appearance.

Speaker John Boehner should just say no.  The president does not have the power to demand an appearance, he must be invited.  Boehner should offer him another time if necessary, but not the time he's requesting.

Obama's plan is simple. Take the attention away from the CA debate, and force NBC to push the debate back so it appears on TV later in the evening when fewer people may be watching.

Very unpresidential, but typical of Obama.

This debate is being hosted by NBC and Politico, neither of which are fans of Republicans.  They may just decide to go ahead at the previously scheduled time and run the debate at the same time as the president's speech, thus killing the debate coverage.  Wouldn't surprise me a bit.

UPDATE:  Here's a good idea:

@Chris_Moody: If Sarah Palin really wanted to shake things up right now, she'd declare a "big announcement" to be made on Sept. 7 at 8:00

Uh-Oh, Sarah Palin to Make "Major Announcement" in Iowa on Sept. 3

Not good:

Sarah Palin is either laying the groundwork for an imminent entry into the presidential race or having a whole lot of fun toying with political analysts.

Though the buzz surrounding a possible "mama grizzly" bid was until recently fading, the former Alaska governor kicked it back up with her "One Nation" bus tour through Iowa earlier this month. It just happened to coincide with the Ames Straw Poll and politics-rich Iowa State Fair.

She stoked the speculative fire once again on Friday, posting a slickly produced video of her trip on the SarahPAC website. In the video, which included shots of Palin interacting with the crowd interspersed with giddy media commentary, the narrator declared the ex-governor is still "grabbing the attention of Iowans and, yes, the media."

The real tease came at the end, with a written reminder to Iowans that Palin will "see you again" on Sept. 3. That's when Palin is expected to deliver a speech at a Tea Party rally in Indianola, Iowa.

Charlie Gruschow, co-founder of event host Tea Party of America, told FoxNews.com he doesn't know what Palin will do at the rally, but that "all we're being told is that she's going to make a major announcement."

Three years ago I was as thrilled as anyone that she was giving the running mate job on McCain's ticket. She was the only reason I could hold my nose and vote for McCain.

However, now I wish she'd stay out of it. Paul Ryan made that decision today, and it was a smart one. Palin will effectively be Mitt Romney's running mate if she gets in because she'll split the conservative vote and end up giving primary victories to Romney. Since the Northeastern primaries are almost all winner-take-all contests that could hand him the nomination (that's pretty much how McCain got it last time).

Rick Perry can win.  I just don't think Sarah Palin can.

Political Video of the Day

What do you think this means?

I fear it means that Sarah Palin is going to get in the presidential race. Yesterday as the "Palin is running" fever spread through the Internet I posted a few thoughts on Twitter that I'll rerun here:

Any support for Palin I had disappeared when Perry got in. Now I want her to stay out and avoid splitting conservative vote.

Biggest argument in Palin v. Perry will be time in office. One has served since 2000 and one quit after 2.5 years. #gameover

If Sarah Palin decides to run she'll effectively be Mitt Romney's running mate, splitting the conservative vote & helping Mitt.

If Sarah Palin runs it'll be the second time she's tried to get a RINO elected. #TeamMitt #McCain08

And John Podhoretz added this:

@jpodhoretz: If Sarah Palin runs, Mitt Romney does the Snoopy dance of joy.

At least one person on Facebook was put out by all this and took me to task saying that had Palin been in the race and Perry jumped in late the same things could be said for him.  And I agreed, yes they could, but it didn't happen that way.  Palin missed her opportunity and now all she can do is screw things up.

Let me restate what I posted before: Sarah Palin, Please Don't Run

Political Graphic of the Day

Five Thirty Eight, a NY Times Political blog, takes a look at the GOP field:

If I were doing the diagram I think I'd move Perry's marker to the left and down a bit from Pawlenty's.  I think Perry is much more electable than 538 thinks.

You can read the whole analysis here.

This Is Why Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan Probably Won't Get in the Race

Talk about your quick starts:

Pollster Scott Rasmussen is about to release the first national post-straw poll numbers. The results:

Perry 29, Romney 18, Bachmann 13, Paul 9.

It looks like Rick got out more of a bang out of Iowa and the Battle of Waterloo than Michele did.

This may also start an exodus of other candidates. Do Cain, Gingrich, Santorum, Huntsman or Paul really have ANY serious chance at the nomination? No.

UPDATE:  Here's the link to the actual poll.

Sarah Palin, Please Don't Run

This may anger some of my conservative friends, but I'm urging Sarah Palin not to enter the GOP race.  She would appeal to much of the same part of the GOP base that Rick Perry will, and having that vote potentially split in the primaries would only open the door to Mitt Romney, much the same way a split in the vote between Romney and Huckabee in 2008 gave us John McCain.

Palin has had many months to get in the race if she wanted to, but now that Rick Perry is in, she should make it clear she won't be running.  She's young enough that she'll have other chances in the future, but this is not the time.  Getting in now will only muddle the field.

We don't need Republican primary races where the GOP candidates are forced to hammer each other while giving Democrats talking points for the general election.  We need primaries where the candidates are telling us how they're better than Obama, and not how they're better than each other.

"Me and Paul Revere"

Steve Martin and the Steep County Rangers have a new single coming - "Me and Paul Revere", the story of Paul Revere's ride as told by his horse.  Take a listen here and you'll note the story matches up quite well with the version told by Sarah Palin and much mocked by the history-challenged press.