Palin brings Utah partisans closer together on issue of working moms

The Salt Lake Tribune, 26 November 2008:

Sarah Palin’s polarizing quest for the vice presidency actually brought Utah Republicans and Democrats closer together on at least one issue — whether women with small children should be in the work force.

Just the mere mention of Palin’s name made Republicans more accepting and Democrats and independents less supportive of mothers seeking careers, say two Brigham Young University researchers.

Chris Karpowitz and Jeremy Pope presented the findings of “the Palin experiment” to a conference sponsored by the university last week. The pre-election survey results show that traditional family values may be more malleable than many previously believed and “partisanship is a pretty powerful force,” Karpowitz said.

Like in most places throughout the country, Palin’s inclusion on the GOP presidential ticket excited Republicans and turned off Democrats in the Beehive State. The poll of 600 registered Utah voters found that 40 percent of Republicans were more likely to support John McCain because he tapped Palin, Alaska’s governor, to be his running mate, while more than 50 percent of Democrats said her addition to the ticket made them less likely to vote Republican.

Researchers then broke the respondents into two random groups. Half were asked if it bothered them when mothers work outside the home. The other half were asked if it bothered them when mothers, “like Sarah Palin,” worked outside the home.

Republicans who answered the generic question were split down the middle in their opinion. But the results were dramatically different for those who answered the question that used Palin as an example of a working mother.

The percentage of Republicans who had a problem with mothers in the workforce generally dropped from 49.5 percent to 32.4 percent with the Palin reference, while the number who had no concern rose from 20.5 percent to 37.3 percent.

This is what Karpowitz and Pope expected, saying the inclusion of Palin created “a psychological tension” between traditional gender roles and partisanship.

But what they didn’t expect to find was that adding Palin into the equation made Democrats less comfortable with the idea of working moms.

More than 80 percent of Democratic or independent respondents to the generic question said they either had no problem or had no strong feeling on the issue. But when Palin was used as an example, the percentage who had no problem fell from 55.2 percent to 41.1 percent and the number who were neutral rose by 12 percentage points. Those who had a problem had a 2-point increase.

“Democrats became more concerned and Republicans suddenly became more accepting,” Karpowitz said.

Oklahoma man pines for Palin

RushLimbaugh.com, 26 November 2008:

CALLER:  Okay.  My question… Well actually, before my question, I went to a McCain rally here in North Carolina, and a Palin rally, two McCain rallies and one Palin rally and there were so many more people to see Palin than there was McCain.  And she has energized in my mind the base, the conservative base, like, “Hey, this is awesome!”  And, you know, a lot of people like me — I’m 31 years old, a conservative — we’re thinking, “You know, Obama is in, but, hey, we had to go through Carter to get Reagan.”  So I’m thinking we have to go through Obama to get Palin, but my question to you is: Why are all these Republicans out there, why don’t they like her?

RUSH:  A-ha.  A-ha.  Okay, I want you to listen very carefully to this.  It’s a long answer that I’m going to try to make very brief.  In the first place, when you say, “Why don’t Republicans like her?” there’s a whole bunch of different kinds of Republicans now.  Like there’s you and me, and we’re conservative Republicans.  But we also have to deal with liberal and moderate or Rockefeller Republicans in our party.  So the party has lost its primary identity:  strong national defense, tax cuts, smaller government.  It’s lost its identity.  It doesn’t believe smaller government is possible.  The Republican Party has too many people who want the government to grow.  Just spend the money on different groups of people in different ways in order to get votes.  It’s called liberalism lite.  They’re calling it redefine conservatism.  Sarah Palin makes them nervous because of precisely what you cited.  She inspired and revved up a Republican Party.  But there are people in the Republican Party who don’t want it to stand for the things that she stands for.  I think her effectiveness is making her a target.

The Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party are also not fond of her, and they’re doing everything they can to make her appear to be the face of the Republican Party, because they think most of the country despises her, too, based on exit polls.  You know, Barbara Walters in the interview I did with her last week asked, “You like Palin?”

I said, “I absolutely do.”  I said, “I think she was great.”  I said, “Why don’t you like her?”

“She was uninformed,” Barbara Walters said, and a light went off in my head, because there is the template.  The one interview she did with Katie Couric and they’ve all decided she’s an idiot and she’s uninformed.  They do not know that there were people in the McCain campaign trying to sabotage her and that she was under tight controls, and she finally wanted to bust out and be who she is.  Those of us that pay attention saw enough of who she is to realize that she is incredibly valuable to the conservative cause and the Republican Party going forward.  But to those that don’t like her it’s simply because of that, Tim, she’s effective and she threatens the old boy network. It’s not a gender thing. She threatens the old boy network, but I’m telling you this is a fundamental thing to understand.

Sarah Palin sets trip to Philadelphia to meet Barack Obama

Boston Herald, 26 November 2008:

Gov. Sarah Palin is going back on the campaign trail, just a few weeks after returning to Alaska from her two-month run for vice president.

The governor is planning a trip to Georgia to campaign on behalf of Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss early next week on her way to Philadelphia to meet with her old foe, President-elect Barack Obama.

Obama is meeting with governors of both parties in Philadelphia to talk about the ailing economy. It’s not clear how many governors are going to attend the Obama event, which the National Governors Association helped put together.

“I don’t know if she has a one-on-one with (Obama),” said Palin spokesman Bill McAllister. “It may be, given that they were both involved in the national campaign.” McAllister said Palin will be in Philadelphia on Monday and Tuesday, and the state will pay for the trip. He said the Chambliss campaign will pay for Palin’s side trip to Georgia.

Palin will join Chambliss for rallies Monday in Augusta, Savannah, Perry and Atlanta. Chambliss is in a runoff election with Democrat Jim Martin.

What’s the benefit to Alaska for Palin to campaign for Chambliss?

“Well, I don’t know. It’s a political event so I’m reluctant to comment much on it. But she works pretty hard, so you could consider it a day off,” McAllister said. “I don’t know that it necessarily has to have a direct benefit for Alaska, although probably you could make some argument there’s an indirect one.”

The GOP’s Palin question: Palin’s popularity gap could signal trouble for the party

MSNBC, 25 November 2008:

Maybe there’s just something about Sarah. Among the broad American electorate, Alaskan governor and recent Republican nominee for vice president Sarah Palin certainly seems to be damaged merchandise.

In a Nov. 7-9 Gallup Poll of 1,010 adults (margin of error +/- 3 percent), 45 percent of Americans agreed they would “personally like to see Sarah Palin be a major national political figure for many years to come” — but 52 percent said they would not like to see that happen. In the pre-Election Day Gallup poll testing Palin, she had a 42 percent favorable rating but a 49 percent unfavorable. In the newer, post-election study, her favorable was 48 percent and unfavorable 47 percent among all Americans.

But, and there is usually a but to such things, 76 percent of Republicans would like to see her a major figure in the future, and she had a whopping 83 percent favorable among them, compared with just a 13 percent unfavorable rating. Among independent voters, Palin had a 44 percent favorable, 48 percent unfavorable rating, and among Democrats, predictably, she had just a 21 percent favorable and 75 percent unfavorable rating.

In combined Gallup surveys of 799 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents conducted between Nov. 5 and 16, 67 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaners said they would like to see Palin run in 2012, 30 percent said they would not. Palin exceeded former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (62 percent), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (61 percent) (both contenders this year), four star Army Gen. David Petraeus (49 percent), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (48 percent), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (34 percent), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (31 percent), current Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (23 percent) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham (21 percent).

Among Republicans who self-identified as conservatives, 73 percent wanted to see Palin run; among moderate and liberal Republicans, the reception was considerably cooler, 48 percent. Sixty-four percent of conservatives wanted to see Romney run, and 59 percent of moderates, suggesting that his strength is broader. For Huckabee, 65 percent wanted him to run, second only to Palin, but just 46 percent of moderate or liberal Republicans would like to see the former Arkansas governor and current Fox News show host take another plunge into the presidential waters.

Even since some of these surveys were conducted, the Alaskan chief executive has begun a concerted effort to repair image problems from the campaign. Whether it works or not remains to be seen, but Republicans have to wonder whether they are going to start off with a frontrunner for the GOP nomination who, at least at first blush, looks unbeatable for the nomination and unelectable in a general election.

It should be emphasized that it is far, far, far, far too early to make such pronouncements, but the gap between how Palin is perceived within and outside the Republican Party is substantial. With the GOP having lost so much ground, if the party doesn’t close the gap, the GOP nominee in 2012 is going to have to do extraordinarily well among independents if they are to win.

Of course in the end, the contours of what the 2012 presidential election will look like is determined far more by how a President Obama performs than what Republicans do, what the party looks like or even who they nominate. But to the extent that the party is defined by its most visible figures, and ultimately by its nominee, nominees and frontrunners do matter.

Inside the mind of John McCain: on picking Palin

Washington Post, 25 November 2008:

John McCain is not a man who likes to be psychoanalyzed.

So, when he gets reflective — even for a short time — it’s worth noting. Especially when the topic is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), the much loved and much despised vice presidential nominee McCain made a star when he plucked her from obscurity in early September.

McCain made his comments during a press conference with local Arizona reporters in which, among other things, he intimated his plans to run for reelection to the Senate in 2010.

Said McCain: “Well, primarily, it was her qualifications, her reform agenda. She took on and defeated an incumbent governor of her own party. She had attacked corruption that she saw there in Alaska. She was a mayor.

“She understands very well, as well as anyone, the energy challenges that are probably, along with our other economic challenges, one of the greatest challenges we’ve faced.

“And I knew that — frankly, that she would be an energizing factor, because she energized me and the impressions that I had of her and the meetings that I had with her.

“So I just — I just believe that, you know, also, outside the beltway was important. Americans have a very low opinion, very low approval rating of Congress and things that are happening in Washington.”

Question answered.

Palin’s celebrity could be a tourism boon

Channel 2 News, KTUU, 22 November 2008:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s heightened national profile may help boost Alaska’s allure as a vacation destination.

Each year the Alaska Travel Industry Association sends out letters from the governor in office to prospective visitors, talking about all the state has to offer.

But this year the association says it appears the unforeseen vice presidential nod Palin received is already boosting interest.

Responses from potential travelers — which include baby boomers and adventurous seniors — is up 20 percent over last year.

“Because Governor Palin speaks passionately about her love for the state and for Alaska as a destination, I think that’s come through in a lot of her television and media interviews,” ATIA president Ron Peck said. “Again we’re just hopeful that that interest in Alaska converts to actual travel.”

The travel industry says it will have a better idea of whether people are serious about Alaska vacations in January when actual bookings start to come in.

Sarah Palin is a wanted woman for talk show appearances

New York Daily News, 22 November 2008:

The nation’s most famous moose-hunting hockey mom now has a new title: international celebrity.

Sarah Palin has been inundated with a flood of TV requests in the past few weeks from across the globe that would make even the hottest Hollywood stars envious.

Oprah. Letterman. Leno. They all want sitdowns.

Agents from the prestigious William Morris Agency and other high-profile firms have come knocking.

Palin, 44, has even received an offer to host her own TV show.

“Tomorrow, Gov. Palin could do an interview with any news media on the planet,” said her spokesman, Bill McAllister.

“Tomorrow, she could probably sign any one of a dozen book deals. She could start talking to people about a documentary or a movie on her life. That’s the level we are at here.”

“Barbara Walters called me. George Stephanopoulos called me,” McAllister said.

“I’ve had multiple conversations with producers for Oprah, Letterman, Leno and ‘The Daily Show.’”

In all, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate is said to be considering about 800 requests for appearances from December through 2009, with 75% coming from out of state.

The GOP’s crush on Sarah Palin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 23 November 2008:

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are most interested in seeing Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Those three received the highest scores among the 10 possible candidates evaluated in a recent Gallup Panel survey.

According to the poll, 67 percent of Republicans would like to see Palin run four years from now, with 62 percent favorable toward a Romney run and 61 percent toward Huckabee.

Sarah Palin turkey incident: does TV interview while turkeys are slaughtered in the background

Huffington Post, 20 November 2008:

Some videos you just have to see to believe. On Thursday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared in Wasilla in order to pardon a local turkey in anticipation of Thanksgiving. This proved to be a slightly absurd but ultimately unremarkable event. But what came next was positively surreal. After the pardon Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while the turkeys were being SLAUGHTERED in the background!! Seemingly oblivious to the gruesomeness going on over her shoulder, she carries on talking for over three minutes.

Palin, Alaska grapple with lower crude prices

Reuters, 19 November 2008:

Falling oil prices will take a bite out of Alaska’s state budget and put a damper on oil-field investment, Gov. Sarah Palin told a conference of major North Slope oil operators on Wednesday.

Palin, the Republican party’s vice-presidential nominee for the recent U.S. presidential election, said the days of oil-revenue budget surpluses are over.

“It’s a wakeup call. We preached, when oil was at $140, that we had to prepare for the day when prices would drop,” Palin told reporters. “We realized it today.”

Palin has until December 15 to present operating and capital budgets for fiscal 2010. She was not specific about any planned cuts but said it will be hard to add workers to agencies. “We don’t want to grow that workforce if we can’t afford to do so,” she said.

The operating budget will likely not be smaller than the current year’s budget, but the rate of growth is expected to slow, she said.

According to state officials, the current fiscal year’s budget assumes an average annual North Slope crude price of about $83 a barrel.

Despite the recent drop in the price of crude and a worldwide financial meltdown, the governor said she remains optimistic about long-term investment in the proposed North Slope natural gas pipeline, a mega-project that has been sought since the 1970s, and other oil-field projects.

The economic collapse means the nation and world “are even riper for resource development,” she said. “This all the more reason to tap directly into our domestic oil and gas supplies.”