While the “One Nation” tour Is not specifically being called a presidential campaign effort, it sure looks like one. Palin released a “One Nation”video on Friday that was more slick than most campaign ads.
But many in the media – which Palin often calls the “lame stream media” – couldn’t even find the One Nation bus Sunday morning.
Palin aides this weekend indicated that the tour schedule would be posted on Palin's political action committee website, SarahPAC.com, but as of Sunday morning there were no updates.
The bus tour is the first major test of what Palin’s organization can do on its own. For every other major public event since Palin resigned as Alaska governor, other people have done the details. Her paid speeches are handled by the people who hire her. The logistics and press for her two book tours were taken care of by her publisher. Her speech on the Mall at Glenn Beck’s rally last summer, the two fundraisers she’s done for the RNC, her appearances at events for tea party groups in Boston and Las Vegas — all that was coordinated by the groups that brought her in.
Palin rehired advance aides Doug McMarlin and Jason Recher to plan the tour. They’re now part of an increasingly small Palin circle, made even smaller since spokeswoman Rebecca Mansour was sidelined from talking to the press after tweets criticizing Palin’s daughter were posted by the Daily Caller earlier this week. SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford, a longtime Washington hand and campaign finance expert with deep ties to the Republican establishment, has been filling Mansour’s role on press. There’s a policy researcher, and she has former Bob Dole aide Michael Glasner serving as her chief of staff.
Along with her husband Todd and Palin herself, that’s the extent of the inner circle. And convinced she’s her own best spokesman and advocate, Palin calls all the shots directly.
At Politico, Molly Ball explains that the Northeast is unfriendly territory:
Palin’s plans, details of which are still hazy, will also take her to New Hampshire for the first time since she was on the GOP ticket with John McCain.
But after all her time away, Granite Staters aren’t feeling particularly warm about her.
A CNN/WMUR poll of New Hampshire Republican voters last week found Palin had the support of just 5 percent, good for fifth place and trailing non-candidate Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has dipped his toe in the presidential waters of late.
Among the New Hampshire electorate as a whole, Palin is viewed favorably by just 28 percent, according to a recent survey by the Democratic automated pollster Public Policy Polling.
In PPP surveys in 31 states over the last six months, just three states had smaller proportions of Palin fans, and all were in the northeast: New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. (Though the firm is partisan, its results generally track with polls by other organizations. PPP’s results were used in this analysis in the interest of consistency across different states.)
Continue ReadingPalin’s highest ratings, in the low 40s, were in states like Montana, Mississippi, Nebraska and Texas, according to PPP.
