There has been endless discussion on this blog and elsewhere about Sarah Palin and her relationship with the Republican Party. Peggy Noonan wrote a recent op-ed about Sarah Palin, and how she’s a creation of the elite branch of the Republican Party:
America doesn’t need Sarah Palin to prove it was, and is, a nation of unprecedented fluidity. Her rise and seeming fall do nothing to prove or refute this.
“The elites hate her.” The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.
“She makes the Republican Party look inclusive.” She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.
“She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes.” She shows your cynicism.
“Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues.” Mrs. Palin’s supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan. Why do her supporters not see this? Maybe they think “not thoughtful” is a working-class trope!
I agree with Peggy, she’s a creation of the Republican Party, and now they have to live with it. She suddenly decided to resign (cash in) with a bogus explanation and now an investigation is showing that her explanation doesn’t add up either.
The icing on the cake comes from work conducted out by Green and the Anchorage Daily News showing that the figures provided by Palin to defend her claim don’t add up.
In a nutshell, Sarah Palin claims that through June 23, 2009, the state had spent $1,963,840 defending her from ethics complaints. However, as Green and the ADN showed, there are several problems with that claim:
The document is remarkably devoid of details. For example, three line items total just over $1 million without offering any explanation. One of those line items is for the “Personnel Reivew (sic) Board” at a comfortably round $560,800. In cases where it does offer detail, as Palin’s own office admits, some of the numbers on the 2-page document are internally inconsistent. According to the document, less than 20 minutes of work was billed at an hourly rate of $30,000. In addition, one line item shows 119 hours of work costing $14,564, while a set of lines elsewhere total 13 hours of work at nearly identical cost of $14,565. Perhaps the nail in the coffin of these numbers is that before Palin invented her retirement explanation, the state was reporting the cost of her ethics inquiries was $296.042.
But despite all we’ve learned – the fibs (thanks, but no thanks to the bridge to nowhere), the incoherence, the thin-skinned victim complex and the outright unpredictable behavior (sudden resignations for no reason) – she is still popular with a large chunk of the Republican Party, just maybe not the Republican elite. Well, she’s going to show them! Here is a cryptic message she put on her SarahPAC page yesterday:
Palin Hints At Independent Conservative Movement
Excerpts from TammyBruce.com
Enter now Sarah Palin with very encouraging comments that lead one to believe that she is indeed planning to do what she must: build an independent conservative movement and take this nation back from the liberals which now control both parties.Thanks liberals, for provoking Sarah into the national scene while vetting that family at the same time.
One thing I will say, the Washington Times with their headline for this exclusive interview reveal an anti-Palin stance. She is, don’t doubt, a threat to every existing political status quo. I hope the Washington Times and their editors realize, sooner than later, that the Palin movement is unstoppable and their credibility would be saved simply by reporting the news instead of becoming a GOP version of the NYT.
Is Sarah Palin forming her own party? If so, who is she taking with her?