Sarah Palin at the Tea Party - a storm in a half-empty teacup - UPDATE

The Teabaggers are not a very happy bunch.

Mother Jones reports:

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips likely assumed that scoring a dinner speech by the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate would guarantee a huge turnout for his National Tea Party Convention, scheduled to start Feb. 4 at Nashville's Gaylord Opryland Hotel. But according to Tea Party insiders, the tickets for the Palin banquet aren't selling—and some conservative activists who have already paid to attend are now demanding refunds. With the controversial event shaping up to be a potential flop, some Tea Partiers are urging Palin to cancel her speech to avoid a humiliating public relations disaster.

According to internal convention planning documents obtained by Mother Jones, Palin will be paid $115,000 to address the attendees—as they dine on steak or lobster. To some Tea Partiers, this lavish affair sounds suspiciously like an exclusive GOP fundraiser and a betrayal of their grassroots movement. (In mid-January, Palin told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that she will not profit from her appearance at the convention, suggesting she would donate her speaking fee to Republican candidates. But she has not provided any details on that, and a Palin spokesperson did not respond to requests for clarification.)

Anthony Shreeve is an activist in Dandridge, Tenn. who quit the convention organizing committee over the expensive ticket prices. He says he has it on good authority that most of the approximately 500 speech-only tickets have not been sold. Shreeve adds that Phillips "isn't going to sell any more," and says other would-be attendees have been demanding—and receiving—refunds. Late on Tuesday afternoon, I tested his claim by attempting to buy 10 tickets to the dinner. If I’d been prepared to shell out $3,587.10, that would apparently have been no problem. "I really hope that Sarah Palin doesn’t come to this event because it's going to be really embarrassing for her to walk into a half-empty room," says Shreeve.

According to the internal Tea Party Nation documents, organizers were depending on Palin’s speech to lure a much larger crowd to the banquet in order to turn a profit. Based on cost estimates used by the organizers in the planning documents, if 1,100 people attend the banquet (600 of whom would also attend the convention), the event would cost the organizers about $401,200, including Palin's $115,000 speaking fee. If all the tickets are sold—both the $549 all-access tickets and the $349 dinner-only tickets—Phillips' group would net about $102,700. But if few of the banquet-only tickets are sold, the organizers are likely to end up seriously in the hole, depending on how much the group had to pay in advance to the hotel, which is charging $120 per person for the dinner. Shreeve observes, "It wouldn't surprise me if [Phillips] ends up filing for bankruptcy the day after."

Will she or won't she? Sarah Palin has pulled out of other events at the last minute, so it wouldn't be out-of-character if she pulled out of this crazy tea party. With only one week left until the event, we won't have too long a wait to find out. Of course, the organizers could give away the unsold tickets:

Tami Kilmarx, a nurse in Nashville who also resigned from the Tea Party Nation convention planning committee after falling out with Phillips, believes the convention may ultimately "completely disintegrate." She says that Phillips has been urged to give away remaining tickets to Palin’s speech to head off the embarrassment of having the former vice presidential candidate speaking to a half-empty room.

Or Sarah could ask her friend Dr Cathy Baldwin-Johnson to provide her with a sicknote:

Given all the negative publicity, Shreeve is surprised Palin hasn’t pulled out already. "In her contract she is allowed to send a representative if she can't make it if she's sick or something. Maybe she’ll come down with the flu," he says with a laugh.


Let's wait and see...

Sarah Palin: unreliable and unhinged

Our friend GinaM has provided us with some very good links to many articles, so I thought it would be good to have some highlights of what went on in Sarah Palin's gubernatorial campaign and compare it to her more recent behaviour in a single post.

There are a few interesting points: Sarah Palin's stupidity, vindictiveness, "transparency" and unreliability.

The article "Who's Your Daddy?", quoted in the post "Sarah Palin's dad", was written by Sarah Palin in response to a tongue-in-cheek remark on ADN in 2003, which pointed out a degree of nepotism in Lisa Murkowski's appointment to the US Senate by her own father. If anything, the remark was favourable to Palin.

The Columbia Journalism Review explained:

Given its tone, location, and context, the “Who’s your daddy?” line is clearly a joke. And not only that, it’s a joke at the expense of Palin’s potential opponent, pointing out the nepotism tainting the younger Murkowski’s appointment.

Sarah Palin's response:

"Who’s Your Daddy?" Great question! I see that I got a “thumbs down" on the Anchorage Daily News Sunday scoreboard with an accompanying insinuation that I may not have the appropriate dad to allow me a particular public service role.

In my original post I said her article was written during the gubernatorial campaign in 2006. I stand corrected. It was written much earlier, then posted on her campaign website.

...details make it clear that it was written long before the forum, probably shortly after the original item ran. For one, in a section where she describes her siblings and their spouses “all happily doing our thing serving Alaskans,” she mentions a brother in law who works as a state trooper. Palin’s sister would file for divorce from state trooper Mike Wooten in April 2005, and the rest, as they say, is history.

One of the comments on the ADN article focuses on her stupidity and the usual "transparency":

October 17, 2006 - 11:17pm | alaskastraightalker

New Energy for Alaska? Transparency too?

Sarah Palin claims to want transparency in government. Yet, if her campaign is any example, Alaska will be back to secret meetings and limited access to public documents as quickly as you could say...Fuhs.

Why do I say that? Palin handed out a document yesterday to the school principals' conference. Unlike Knowles, who distributed position papers on things like K-12 education, preschool education- issues one would expect from a candidate for Governor, Palin copied something posted on her website that was, especially in the context of a principals' conference, a little strange- and slapped it on her letterhead. When its distribution was reported on this blog, what do you think happened?

That's right. The Palin campaign took it off their website. Quickly.

I think it's great that Palin loves her parents. I'm sure the other candidates love theirs as well. The question is: Wasn't the candidate for Governor prepared to hand out her positions on critical issues facing our schools, instead of a document which indicates simmering anger over an event which occurred over 3 years ago? And why did the campaign attempt to cover up the existence of the document? Is the speed in which it was removed from the Palin website what they mean by new energy?

We know very well how things had a tendency to disappear from her governor's website later on...

Some comments on another ADN article:

October 16, 2006 - 9:41pm | opal

I heard

Knowles and Palin were guest speakers at the Shop Steward Leadership conference in Girdwood. Once Knowles began speaking Palin realized the event wasn't what she thought it was. Caught off guard and unprepared she was heard bawling out a staffer over the phone. Apparently when it was her time to speak, Palin composed herself and made it through her speech. Anyone else have more details??

October 16, 2006 - 11:17pm | justintime

Meltdown at IBEW

Reportedly Palin expected 15-20 people at a meeting and when she showed up and there were 200 she went into the restroom, screamed at her staff, and burst into tears. My friends in attendence were not impressed at all, and they were undecideds.

That's the first three items clarified. Sarah Palin has been stupid, vindictive and "transparent" for a long, long time. Which brings us to her unreliability (Not without a generous dose of stupidity as her main reason for avoiding public events).

Back in 2006, she had a different spokesperson, but please note the similarity between the following e-mail and the more recent statements by Meg Stapleton:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Sarah Palin's campaign told UAF on Thursday she would not be attending a debate on campus set for next week.

Palin spokesman Curtis Smith said Palin's sorry she can't attend.

"I'd like to state for the record that she never agreed to do so," Smith said in an e-mail. "As you can imagine, her schedule is extremely packed."

The real reason:

...her opponents say she's trying to avoid public forums that would reveal her lack of understanding on the issues.

This reminds me of the GOP dinner she finally decided to attend more recently:

This morning, the Knowles campaign announced a joint press conference with Halcro that was to follow a candidate forum in front of a group of school principals at the Sheraton. The topic was to be: Where's Sarah?

But Palin showed at the forum, spoiling the press conference, which never happened. Halcro says he and Knowles are frustrated by Palin's absence at events.

There are so many examples of Sarah Palin's unreliability... As we've seen, it's not a recent development, it's more of a matter of style.

During the 2008 legislative session she was absent for so long that the legislators started wearing "Where's Sarah?" buttons. In 2009, she dodged discussions with lawmakers regarding the stimulus package, didn't show up for a teleconference and then proceeded to blame the lawmakers, saying they were too busy holding a press conference of their own.

These things should be sufficient to write Sarah Palin off as a serious candidate for anything, but as the icing on the cake, she's also completely unhinged. Geoffrey Dunn makes a good analysis on HuffPo about Sarah Palin's obsession with president Obama, culminating with what can only be described as paranoia:

Palin's official spokesperson Meg Stapleton asserted that there is a White House conspiracy behind the anti-Palin groundswell led by none other than Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "The trail is pretty direct and pretty obvious to us," Stapleton declared.

"[Palin] represents the biggest threat to Obama," Stapleton stated. "She's the only one who can get the base excited....I just hope to God Rahm Emanuel isn't using taxpayer money to come after Alaska."

When Sarah Palin's adoring fans accused the progressive bloggers of being paid by Axelrod or Emmanuel to write hateful stuff about their idol, we laughed. But seeing these accusations coming directly from her spokesperson is a bit scary.

We're not afraid of Sarah Palin because she has a monumental intellect or the ability to mount a real challenge to the president and his policies. What frightens me is the way her celebrity status is being used by cynical GOP elements and the big corporations to derail the debate about healthcare reform, for example. I get very worried when I remember how George W Bush was "elected" twice and the effect of his two terms in office on world stability plus the economic crisis we're still living.

The trolls say I don't have the right to criticize American polititians. I'm a British citizen living in France. Young British soldiers are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The homes of many British people are still being repossessed, our children can't obtain mortgages, many can't find jobs. The ripple effect of the disastrous policies of those eight years are still being felt all over the world.

We cannot risk having the likes of Sarah Palin anywhere near the White House. If she has a powerful machine behind her, the risk of a GW Bush in a skirt happening to all of us is very real.

Can we afford to sit back, ignore Sarah Palin and let it happen?

Perish the thought!
.