Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (54 page)

On the back of her successful attack on her neighbor Chip Thoma, Sarah suddenly found herself being accused by Huffington Post contributor Geoffrey Dunn of plagiarizing phrases from a 2005 Newt Gingrich article in a speech she gave in Anchorage. Naturally, panic ensued, and we spent the next two days attacking those who made the allegations and went about “correcting the record” by bombarding our Fox News and blog surrogates with denials. In defending herself, Sarah reached deep to elicit sympathy by reminding everyone she had a son in harm's way:

Sarah's attorney, Thomas Van Flein, wrote a legal letter of defense that Ivy and I distributed to everyone on our extensive email lists. Then Newt Gingrich rode in on a proverbial white horse, calling the allegations “just silly.” His defense and staunch support during her vice presidential campaign should have earned him a lifetime debt of gratitude. However, just as Rossi learned, Sarah was a what-have-you-done-for-me-today friend. Four days after her speech, Newt—perhaps unbeknownst to him—landed on Sarah's enemy list.

This transformation had to do with a speaking engagement on June 8 at the Washington DC Convention Center. Sarah was invited to be the keynote speaker at an annual congressional fund-raising dinner. As was her custom, she hesitated before accepting, and, we were told, Gingrich was invited as a fallback. A suddenly dis-invited and miffed Sarah threatened not to attend before begrudgingly relenting.

There was nothing unrelenting about her anger, however. The subsequent vitriol over being denied a speaker slot made more understandable Sarah's prior rabid reactions to other enemies, including Ruedrich, Stambaugh, Wooten, Monegan, Green, Syrin, Biegel, Obama, Murkowski, Bitney, Knowles, Halcro, Thoma, French, Cyr, Branchflower, Fagan, Binkley, Couric, Gibson, McLeod, and even Senator McCain and staff.

On June 7, the day before Gingrich's speech, Sarah wrote:

Ivy gave Sarah much-needed love while—as if necessary—whipping up the governor's passion. (In all fairness, I was equally on board.)

Of Gingrich's speech, Sarah wrote,
“Zzz. Wayyy long.”
By comparison, actor Jon Voight's speech was
“bold”
and
“kicked butt.”
Newt had inflicted one of those slights from which Sarah would never recover. Newt Gingrich, beware, she's not wired to forgive or forget.

Fortunately for Sarah's peace of mind, David Letterman was about to put us in a much stronger offensive position with an off-color joke at Sarah's expense on his late night television show. With his actions, we'd now have the luxury of ignoring the DC slight and could devote full attention to attacking the comedian and putting Sarah front and center on the national scene.

We'd take the strategic game plan we used against Juneau neighbors and apply that to a much bigger target, proving we were definitely ready for prime time.

From the beginning of 2009, Sarah's chief of staff, Mike Nizich, along with Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, assumed most of Sarah's administrative duties, as the rest of us, most especially Sarah, wove our way through and around one distraction after another, whipping up a frenzy that became all-encompassing.

On Monday night, June 8—literally on the heels of Sarah's humiliating demotion at the congressional fund-raising dinner—CBS
Late Show
host David Letterman pressed our react button hard. He took note that Sarah had attended a New York Yankees game with her daughter. He made a joke about the governor looking like a “slutty flight attendant.” Even less funny and more offensive, he said, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” The daughter who attended the game happened to be fourteen-year-old Willow.

Sarah had us mobilized within hours. She crafted a statement of disgust and instructed us to ensure its extensive distribution:

Within forty-five minutes, we had a media target list, and spokesperson Meg Stapleton wrote,
“I will forward to: Rush, Greta, Glenn, Sean, O'Reilly, Norah O'Donnell, Matt Glick, Kate Snow, Wolf Blitzer.”

Meg also took responsibility for putting everything on Facebook after having crafted a statement for Todd's attribution: “Any ‘jokes' about raping my 14-year old are despicable. Alaskans know it and I believe the rest of the world knows it, too.”—Todd Palin.

When Letterman claimed his joke was not aimed at fourteen-year-old Willow but unwed mother Bristol, Ivy would have none of that:

Meanwhile, Sarah's fervor escalated by the minute:
“What a freak Letterman is becoming—taking on Bristol again? I wish people would be outraged at his hypocrisy and sexism—and that they'd do something about it—tho smarter people than I will have to think of what to do.”

By day's end, we felt we'd won the day. From Ivy:
“Good covg all
the way around today, I think. Great comments on Hannity w guest Ann Coulter. Rush, Ziegler and Eddie had great shows today, too, talking the gov's record up and defending her family.”

In case we were underestimating her passion, Sarah later added,
“Watched the Letterman clips Old man pervert creep.”
Even Sarah's biographer, Lynn Vincent, joined in by writing,
“What an asshole.”

Two days later, armed with a robust supply of adjectives to describe David Letterman, we were still full steam ahead. Sarah had her Google alerts capturing every headline and especially liked this one: “New York Lawmaker Calls on CBS to Fire Letterman for Palin Comments.” With an “Amen!,” she wondered why Alaskan lawmakers weren't as responsive:
“when one of their hometown native girls
[
Willow
]
gets hit nationally they say nothing.”
With that, she decided that we should
“lead the charge for ak legislators. Good issue . . . to jump on.”

With persistence, Sarah ultimately landed on the
Today
show with Matt Lauer. By now, Sarah had managed to tie Letterman into a national crisis when she said, “No wonder young girls especially have such low self-esteem in America . . . and that does contribute to some acceptance of abuse of young women.” Sarah's Juneau neighbor complained about bus congestion, and that became an attack on children laughing, trampolines, and lemonade stands. David Letterman, at eleven thirty on a weeknight, made a horrible and demeaning joke that few would have heard had Sarah not turned it into a four-day battle cry that escalated into accusations of child sex abuse. And in both instances, the media ran with it.

Lauer pointed out that Meg Stapleton had issued her own off-color comment when she wrote,
“It would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.”
When Lauer asked Sarah if she thought this also in bad taste, she answered, “Hey, maybe [Letterman] couldn't be trusted, because Willow's had enough of this type of comments and maybe Willow would want to react to him in a way that maybe would catch him off guard. That's one way to interpret such a comment.”

What bothered me—as well as two of her commissioners and a syndicated national radio host—was that she could have been talking about moving Alaska's energy policies forward and striking a new
deal struck with Exxon to partner with her gasline project, AGIA. Instead, she used what should have been
Alaska's time
and turned it into
Sarah's time
to continue noisily kicking the Letterman can down the road.

Newt Gingrich once counseled the governor to reframe any question she didn't like into the question she wished the interviewer had asked. In her
Today
show response, she implemented a frequent and superior strategy: answer a question you don't like with a string of words that make absolutely no sense to anyone listening. As if just hearing her voice were enough, Sarah's word salad responses worked like a charm. Matt Lauer nodded and moved on.

Just after the Republican primary for governor in 2006, when
Anchorage Daily News
reporter Tom Kizzia suggested that smoothing over missing facts would no longer work for Sarah, that voters and critics would demand more, he was mistaken.

For Sarah and supporters, facts were as irrelevant as comprehensible English.

The attack formula worked on even trivial matters of emotional distress; with Sarah, no slight was ever small. Briefly, when Sarah was snubbed as speaker at Bristol's Wasilla High School graduation in May 2009, we chose at Sarah's behest to make that another story of unfair suffering. The campaign began with Rebecca Mansour's blog
Conservatives4Palin
. She reported that Sarah was “the first female governor of their state and the first female vice presidential candidate nominated by the GOP. She was a Wasilla Warrior—the co-captain of the 1982 championship girl's basketball team. She was the former two-term mayor of Wasilla. And now she is not invited to speak before an audience in her own hometown.”