Notes On Sarah Palin

I haven't blogged much about Sarah Palin lately, so I thought I'd catch you up on some things going on in Palin-World. It seems that things are not going too well for the Wasilla Witch. One of the biggest of these is how silly she now looks for her "drill, baby, drill" mantra. She's still trying to push that but it looks pretty feeble in light of the continuing Gulf oil disaster.

She also hasn't had much luck in endorsing candidates this year. Almost every candidate she endorsed in the primaries lost. The notable exceptions are Rand Paul, who takes crazy to new and dizzying heights, and Nikki Haley, whose success can be traced more to a Jenny Sanford (ex-wife of Gov. Mark Sanford) endorsement than to Palin. In fact, it's starting to look like a Palin endorsement can have a toxic effect on a candidacy.

The Washington Post's on-line column called The Plum Line has some interesting numbers culled from a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. The poll asked its respondents how they'd feel if a candidate were endorsed by Sarah Palin. Here's how they answered the question:

8% would be enthusiastic about that

17% would be comfortable about that

15% would have some reservations about that

37% would be very uncomfortable about that

Those are not good numbers. At least 52% (a majority) would have some or serious reservations about a candidate endorsed by Sarah Palin. It looks like Republican candidates need to think twice before asking Palin for an endorsement. And there were only two things that were seen by the respondents as being worse than a Palin endorsement. They are:

Supporting the economic policies of George W. Bush

Supporting the elimination of federal agencies and/or social security

Meanwhile, things are not going well for Palin on the legal front either. Remember when a legal defense fund was started for Palin to defend her against various accusations of her misusing her position as governor (some of which were found true)? Well it turns out, as many of us thought at the time, that the fund violated ethics laws.

To settle the ethics complaint, Palin has now agreed to return all of the money collected before she resigned as governor -- a total of $386,856 (only $33,546 was collected after she resigned). Complicating matters is the fact that $87,680 has been spent from the fund. That means $54,134 is going to have to come out of Sarah's pocket since it can't come from the $386,856. But I'm sure she can afford it with the huge speaking fees she has been getting.

Speaking of the huge speaking fees, she may not be getting those much longer. It seems that Sarah Palin just doesn't have the drawing power she once had. Maybe people are starting to figure out that her head is as empty as her speeches are incoherent.

In Atlanta (in one of the reddest of the red states) Zachariah's Way, a Gwinnett County ministry is holding a fund-raising event for special needs parishioners. They have rented a 13,000 seat auditorium and the headline speaker at the event is Sarah Palin. But so far the soon-to-be-held event is a flop. They are having a lot of trouble selling tickets to the event and it now looks like thousands of the seats may be empty. People are just not willing to spend $25 to $65 to see Palin ($1000 to attend a special reception).

As I said, things are just not going well in Palin-World. If the magic is not gone, it is disappearing fast.