Palin makes preliminary moves to run for GOP nomination
Image by Gene1138 via FlickrSarah Palin is fortifying her small staff of advisers, buying a house in Arizona — where associates have said she could base a national campaign — and reviving her schedule of public appearances. The moves are the most concrete signals yet that Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, is seriously weighing a Republican presidential bid.There is more. Some of these items I have posted about earlier, but this is a compilation of events and evidence that suggest she is in. She attracts so much attention that she will not need as much money as others to get her message out and to get free coverage. Her problem is that she will also get negative coverage from those in the media who hate her and her policy positions.It will be interesting to see how disciplined she will be on the campaign trail. She needs to develop a message of the top three to five things she wants to do as President and hammer them. She is also good at attacking President Obama. That is another reason the left hates her.
While it is by no means clear that she would be willing to give up her lucrative speaking career and her perch as an analyst on Fox News to face the scrutiny and combat that would come with her entrance into the race, she is being pressed by supporters for a decision and has acknowledged that time is running out.
Two people familiar with the details of the real estate transaction said Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, have bought a $1.7 million house in Scottsdale, Ariz., through a shell company that hid their identity. Like others interviewed for this article, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger the Palins, who have become especially protective of their privacy in the maelstrom that has followed them since 2008. The Arizona Republic reported Sunday on speculation in Scottsdale that the Palins were the buyers of the house.
While Arizona would be a more convenient travel hub for a presidential campaign than Alaska, there are other reasons besides logistics that the Palins might want a house there. Their daughter Bristol recently bought a house in Maricopa, which is near Scottsdale.
She has reshuffled her staff, rehiring two aides who have helped plan her travel and public events. And she is expected to resume a schedule of public events soon — perhaps as early as this weekend — to raise her political profile at a moment when the Republican presidential field appears to be taking final form.
The drumbeat intensified on Tuesday night when the conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon was quoted on RealClearPolitics as saying that he was releasing a feature film he made with Ms. Palin’s acquiescence about her tenure as governor of Alaska. The film is to be shown next month in Iowa, whose caucuses will kick off the nominating contest early next year.
Taken together, the moves are at odds with conventional wisdom — if not wishful thinking — among establishment Republicans in Washington that Ms. Palin has decided not to run. That thinking has been voiced increasingly on television and in blogs and newspaper articles as the party’s professional political class — which Ms. Palin has railed against — has sought to declare the field of candidates closed and move on to the next phase of debates and straw polls in the slow-starting campaign.
Ms. Palin would undoubtedly be able to raise substantial campaign funds and attract constant media attention if she ran. But she is a divisive figure in the party, and could have to overcome what polls have consistently suggested is skepticism and even opposition to her among some fellow Republicans.
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Some in the media will just be unfair. She saw that after the Arizona shooting where she was blamed for the acts of a mad man and when she defended herself she was criticized for making it about her. That kind of unfairness is something she is going to have to deal with and she needs to develop a more Romanesque way of deflecting the criticism.
I like Sarah Palin. I think she is right on most of the issues, and the criticism she receives is just the mean nature of leftist politics.
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