Palin appeal transcends the 'stories'
...I suspect the sources for these stories will be outed. They have given liberals in the media more material for their dismissive paragraphs about Palin and the Republicans and have helped no one on our side. I think Viguerie and Blackwell have it about right. She will continue to be supported by conservatives and there will be a backlash against the people responsible for the stories.Palin had barely touched down when conservative Web sites began hawking defiant bumper stickers: "I'll keep my guns, freedom and money. You can keep 'The Change': Palin 2012." It's 1,460 days until the next election, and loyal Palinmaniacs have already kicked off the palin4pres2012.com Web site and mailing list.
Emerging from her plane, Palin was met with chants of "2012! 2012!" She left herself a very big open door when asked about her plans in four years.
"We'll see what happens then," she told reporters.
But even as she hedged, stories emerged this week that threatened to collapse Palin's carefully cultivated pit bull-with-lipstick, moose-hunter, hockey-mom, maverick image.
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Palin released a statement calling the accusations "so unfortunate and, quite honestly, sickening. ... The accusations we are reading are not true."
Conservative icon and author Richard Viguerie, who heads conservativehq.com - and who has called Palin "the new Ronald Reagan" - dismissed the reports Thursday and defended Palin as a figure who will continue to have enormous clout with conservatives.
"Almost the entire leadership of the McCain campaign was Washington insiders, lobbyists ... and they come from a very different background than Sarah Palin," he said. "She became a hero ... and a rising star in this campaign," a status he said is likely to continue as conservatives aim to reshape and remarket their brand in the wake of the 2008 election landslide for Barack Obama.
Days after the election, Palin's future is the subject of enormous speculation among Republicans - conservatives are pushing her to be among the party's next generation of leaders even as the old guard appears to be distancing itself.
The enmity toward Palin within some factions of the GOP remains abundantly clear. Even before the election was called on Tuesday night, damaging leaks began to spring from the embattled McCain campaign, some of whose top advisers were quoted in major newspapers suggesting Palin was a "whack job" and a "diva."
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"The candidacy of Sarah Palin was immensely helpful, absolutely essential to making this a reasonably close race," said Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committee member from Virginia.
"If she had not been on the ticket, our Republican ticket would have fared as Dole's did back in 1996," Blackwell said. He called her one of "a new generation of conservatives in the Republican Party that we are looking at."
GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway said that before anyone begins talking about Palin's possibilities in 2012, "watch how she is viewed in 2010."
"I would be very interested in how many candidates ask her to campaign, ask her to come out of Alaska and join her on the campaign trail as a standard-bearer," she said.
On the potentially damaging stories, Conway added, "I'm not surprised. I'm just very disappointed ... because it seemed like some of the stories were being dispatched before the campaign was over" - and at a time when the campaign had its hands full with other things, "like Florida."
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