Sarah Palin and the Beltway GOP

After thinking about the recent "issue" between SarahPAC and the NRSC/NRCC, I have come to the conclusion that the GOP will end up the loser in all of this.

For one thing, the goal of the event is to raise money. Obviously more funds would have been raised had Governor Palin attended. Scheduling screw ups will happen from time to time. However, Governor Palin made it clear that she never personally accepted the invitation and would consider the invitation after the legislative session concluded. The legislative session ends in mid-April and the GOP fundraiser is scheduled for early June, meaning that there was more than enough time available for the GOP to wait for her response. I say this because sometimes it is beneficial to "wait it out," especially considering that she is a money-making machine for Republicans and has the unique ability of drawing large crowds to events. But they decided to dump her for Newt Gingrich. It's as if the Los Angeles Dodgers were hosting a charity event, and because Manny Ramirez did not get back to them in time, they inserted Steve Sax instead simply out of spite.

The fundamental problem with the beltway GOP is that they believe that they own the party outright. The only thing they have "owned" over the last decade are record setting deficits and outrageous government spending.

They also "own" last night's debacle of a special election in the New York's 20th Congressional district. Tedisco can still pull it out after the absentee ballots are counted, but this is a district that leans conservative and also contains a huge Republican registration advantage. And, sadly, we've seen in the past how incompetent the GOP is in fighting Democrat fraud in these too close to call races (think "Senator Franken").

You may have also noticed that many political organizations are using Palin's name and image to gin up interest in their events. CPAC comes to mind. For months CPAC ginned up interest by using Palin's name in the hope that it would lead to greater attendance. And it did! The media reported that she would be attending the event; however, many people did not bother to check the schedule or they would have seen that Palin only appeared on the "invited" list. She never confirmed her attendance.

Taking shots at Governor Palin for this "issue" will not help the Republican party at all. The GOP is still "brand damaged," and the D.C. players are still the same. For as much as I admire Newt Gingrich, he does not have the ability to revive the Republican party. When I am asked my political ideology, I simply state that I am a conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin.

This situation reminds me of the Saxby Chambliss run-off election in December. Chambliss called in everybody he could find to campaign with him to defeat his Democratic challenger. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani all attended Chambliss campaign rallies. At most they drew around 1,500 people between the three of them. Chambliss then asked Governor Palin to help out, and she graciously accepted. She came in the day before the election because she was viewed as the one person who could really fire up the base and get them to the polls. The audiences for each of her events that day were double (and even triple) the size of the total audience for all the other speakers combined. Are you getting the picture? Chambliss had a small edge in the polls before Palin came to Georgia, but he ended up winning by an astounding margin. He attributed his victory margin to Palin revving up the base for him.

Republicans do not get enthused when they hear from Gingrich and McCain. They do not open their checkbooks to make a donation after listening to a speech by Mitt Romney. The facts bear out that they will do both of these things for Governor Sarah Palin. The McCain campaign raised more money in the days immediately following Sarah Palin's introduction as McCain's running mate than at any time prior.

The fact that the high muck-a-mucks of the GOP have thrown their best fundraiser under the bus in order to make an elitist inside-the-beltway point just goes to show you how incompetent and out of touch they are as a party. This is the same incompetence they showed while in power, and it's the very reason why they are now out of power. The GOP beltway elite need to prove themselves to ordinary Americans like us and Sarah Palin, not the other way around. She doesn't own them anything, and neither do we.

At the end of the day, it was the NRSC and NRCC that snubbed Governor Palin. They showed her the same contempt they've shown us over the years. Remember this the next time the Republican party asks for your money. We support SarahPAC here because we trust her more than we trust them. We're conservatives here, not Republicans.