http://www.alternet.org/election08/105359/Posted on October 31, 2008, Printed on November 1, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/105359/Amy Goodman: No matter who wins the White House November 4th, a group of prominent conservatives are planning to meet the next day in Virginia to discuss the way forward for the movement. And regardless of the outcome, Governor Sarah Palin will be high on the agenda. The New York Times reports if John McCain loses the election, Palin could emerge as a standard bearer for the conservative movement and a potential presidential candidate in 2012, albeit one who will need to address her considerable political damage.
Most Americans had never heard of Sarah Palin when McCain first announced her as his running mate back in August. Her national debut came at the Republican Party's convention in St. Paul, where she sought to cast herself as an antidote to the elitist culture inside the Beltway... Governor Palin's sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington elite than her rhetoric suggests. That's according to an article in The New Yorker magazine by investigative reporter Jane Mayer. It's called "The Insiders: How John McCain Came to Pick Sarah Palin." Jane Mayer now joins us in Washington, D.C.
Jane Mayer: Well, Juneau, Alaska turns out to be a major stop for cruise ships that come through Alaska, and there are political cruises, in particular, that are run by the conservative political magazines that stop there. And so, when Sarah Palin was elected governor, she learned that a number of those Washington insider elite members of the media would be trooping through Juneau. And despite the rhetoric that she's got that is about, you know, sort of deriding them and saying she doesn't, you know, seek their approval, in fact, she invited most of them to lunch and to other receptions that she threw. She even brought some up on a helicopter ride to go see a couple sites in Alaska.
So, she was courting some of those Washington insiders. In particular, they were the pundits that work for the Weekly Standard magazine, which is Rupert Murdoch's conservative political magazine, and the National Review, the old conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley. So she made a great impression on some of these pundits when they came through. They enjoyed their lunches and receptions and went back and wrote fabulous stories about her, and this was one of the things that really got the ball rolling for her... I interviewed many of them. They described her as completely charming. And an unusual dish was served, an Alaska dish, halibut cheeks, in the governor's mansion. And she was -- her little girl Piper popped in and asked about dessert. And Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, who is a regular on a show called "The Beltway Boys" and writes for the Weekly Standard, and Michael Gerson, who was a former speech -- top speech writer for President Bush and writes a column in the Washington Post, were all there with various family members of theirs. And they were smitten by her, especially Bill Kristol, who has really been beating the drums for Sarah Palin, pretty much ever since... the second group came in several weeks later. They were the National Review crowd, and it was a much bigger group. One of the things that interested me about that group was, among the dignitaries was Dick Morris, who is a political consultant and a very sort of cynical, savvy player in politics, the ultimate, really, Washington insider, in a way. All the kinds of people that Sarah Palin has said that she's such an outsider to, well, they were all at a reception for her there. And, in fact, Dick Morris sort of pulled her aside for a private conversation, which she then revealed later to the group, in which he said, "If you want to be successful politically, you've got to continue to hold onto your image as an outsider. Play up that outsider thing." And obviously, she has. But it's just so interesting to hear that really it's a calculated strategy. It's not just because she is an outsider; it's a ploy, to some extent... so the cruises come through in the summer of 2007. Fred Barnes goes right back to Washington and writes a glowing column about Palin and what a fabulous politician she is and a promising, rising star in the Republican Party.
Soon after, there's this young man named Adam Brickley, who is just out of college, and he is a staunch conservative, he's looking for somebody who could add some pep to the Republican ticket, and he particularly is worried about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as, you know, a possible combination. So, anyway, he's looking for a female. And he starts with Wikipedia, and he just looks for all the females in the Republican Party. And he told -- I interviewed him -- he says at some point, you know, he couldn't find anybody good, and then he thinks, oh, what about that lady that just got elected in Alaska? So he looks up things about Sarah Palin and sees that she's considered kind of this rising star...And so, he starts a blog that's called Sarah Palin for Vice President Blog. And it starts pushing Palin and gets picked up by many other conservative blogs and then finally works its way into kind of conservative radio, Rush Limbaugh, and the American Spectator, conservative magazines. So there's this sort of growing groundswell... the thing that interested me about Brickley is, while he is a kind of authentic, one-of-a-kind voice, I think, he is also the product of -- very much of Washington, in a way. He's not from Washington; he's from Colorado, but he's been trained by a number of conservative organizations in Washington... he's a home-schooled evangelical Christian, one that is so far into sort of the kind of conservative Christianity, his family describes themselves as Messianic Jews, meaning that they believe to be like Christ they need to be Jews, because Christ was a Jew. It's very unusual, where they're coming from....
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