Palin and her One Nation bus tour are making a surprise trip to Iowa, if you haven’t heard. In an email sent yesterday to supporters of her political action committee she said she’s going to “meet folks at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines this week.
State fairs hold a special place in our nation’s history and heritage, so my family is honored to highlight one of them on one stop along the One Nation Tour route,” wrote the ex-governor of Alaska.
Does this mean a President Palin would make the Iowa State Fairgrounds a National Park? Just asking.
IN PICTURES: Sarah Palin bus tour
Palin also noted that she’s excited to try some of the Iowa State Fair’s famous fried foods, including fried butter-on-a-stick, fried cheesecake, and so forth. She’ll enjoy them “in honor of those who’d rather make us just ‘eat our peas,’ ” noted Palin, in a not-so-veiled reference to President Obama’s recent statement comparing the hard choices in a debt deal with legume consumption.
Vegetables aside, we’ll say this about that: once again, Sarah Palin has proved that she is the quasi-political attention-getting master of the US media universe.
That’s because there just happens to be a debate in Ames, Iowa tonight among declared GOP presidential contenders. A straw poll follows this weekend. So hundreds of political reporters are already in Iowa – pre-positioned for a Palin drive-by. Pure genius.
Somewhere Rick Santorum is sitting in a hotel room with his face in his hands. It’s the lagging candidates who’ll really feel the tire tracks of the bus tour. If you’re a “Good Morning America” producer, which story would you rather see on the air – Gingrich Campaign Still Dead, or Palin Views a Cow Made Entirely of Butter?
Plus, SarahPAC has posted a new one-minute Palin video that makes pretty much every other Republican contender’s commercials look underproduced.
It’s a paean to small town America, which grows “good people ... with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” It invokes Harry Truman, contains several quick shots of the young Ronald Reagan, and lingers on an Iowa State Fair sign.
Perry is expected to announce he will run for president on Saturday in South Carolina. He will travel to Iowa on Sunday.
Palin also addressed the recent treatment of Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in the press and in the debate last night.
Asked about the Newsweek cover that showed a wild-eyed Bachmann staring into space with the headline "Queen of Rage," Palin said she was also featured wearing running shorts in a cover on the magazine.
"I think the headline is really worse than the picture," she said.
Palin was also asked what she thought of the question Bachmann was asked during the debate about whether she would "submit" to her husband if she was elected president.
"Anything in a debate is fair game. I've been asked the goofiest questions and the strangest questions too in my years in public office," Palin said. "She articulated what she feels in her heart and to her submission means respect, she explained it."
She later added, "I respect my husband too. I can't imagine my husband ever telling me what to do."
While Palin is not listed on the straw poll ballot, she was mobbed by the press like she was a frontrunner from the moment she set foot on the fairgrounds.
Around noon the word went out that Palin, her husband Todd and a small entourage had descended on the Iowa state fair sending reporters scrambling through livestock exhibits to find her.
Palin's arrival in Iowa the day before the straw poll is just the latest in a series of trips the former vice presidential nominee has made that coincides with major events for the GOP field.
Earlier this summer when she happened to arrive in Iowa the day after Bachmann's campaign launch and in May when she New Hampshire the same day as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney official presidential announcement.
Asked why she was in Iowa, Palin said she was simply "accepting an invitation to get to be here to experience this wonderful historic event" on the bus tour she launched in May.
DES MOINES, Iowa - Sarah Palin stoked speculation anew Friday of a future presidential run, inserting herself into the 2012 conversation by visiting in Iowa during an important week in the GOP race - and just as Texas Gov. Rick Perry becomes a candidate.
"There is still plenty of room for a common sense conservative," the former Alaska governor insisted to a crush of reporters as she inspected cattle with her family at the Iowa State Fair.
Characteristically, she played coy about her plans and sent mixed messages.
Palin said she hasn't decided whether she would run for president, but suggested she was leaning toward a bid, adding: "When we're ready to announce ... you won't be able to miss the announcement."
Asked about Perry, she said: "He's a great guy and I look forward to see him in those debates." But she rebuffed questions about whether that meant she'd be standing on stage with him.
Appearing on Fox News' "Sean Hannity Show" Friday night, Palin welcomed the idea of Perry entering the race, saying: "You deserve good choices. As for me, I'm still considering it."
When pressed earlier in the day about her future plans, Palin said a trip home and a visit to the Alaska state fair were in order.
"Moose season is starting up in Alaska soon so we'll go back home and moose hunt," she said, adding: "And then, we'll come back out on the road, we hope."
As she shuffled through cattle pens and livestock buildings in a casual T-shirt and black slacks, Palin posed for pictures with well-wishers and fans. She scrawled her autograph on hats and fair programs, asked supporters what they did for a living and talked about becoming a grandmother.
Nearby, onlookers jumped onto fences and craned to get a glimpse of the Palins amid the jostling throng of journalists circling her. It was a marked changfe from the declared candidates who visited the fair and met with voters without such a buzz.
Officially, Palin, the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee who resigned the Alaska governorship midterm in 2009, was in Iowa as the Midwestern swing of a "One Nation" bus tour that she began in the spring on the East Coast. She called it a family vacation but her political action committee paid for the trip. Part of it included a visit to the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire - the same day GOP front-runner Mitt Romney formally entered the race.
This time, her visit to the state that leads off the GOP nominating contests was sandwiched between a Thursday night debate and Saturday's Iowa straw poll in which her would-be rivals are participating. She said she wasn't planning to stick around for the results of the test vote that could indicate which candidate has the strongest organization in the leadoff caucus state.
In an effort to raise money for the documentary’s upcoming North American release campaign, Broomfield has placed the film on the crowd funding site Kickstarter, seeking $30,000.
“This film was made for the American people and Kickstarter now offers them a chance to be a part of the distribution process to directly support the documentary’s national roll-out,” he said. “We need help getting this out so voters gain a true understanding of the person who is asking for their political support.”
The film sees Broomfield as he speaks with school friends, family and Republican colleagues of the former governor of Alaska, all while battling the icy snows of a Wasilla winter. The evangelical community, where Palin attended high school and eventually became mayor, features 76 churches with a population of just 6 thousand and is the Crystal meth capital of the state.
Palin has yet to confirm whether or not she intends to run for the Presidency, but recently announced that she would be embarking on a second leg of her One Nation bus tour.
Palin pressed flesh, petted cows, held children and signed countless autographs, all while answering questions from a rather cowed media scrum. Lots of questions. In fact, she answered so many questions that, according to Politico -- who was actually there and not relying on an anonymous source -- the press kind of fizzled out. Here's what Ben Smith said:
By the time she trudged up a dirt parking lot to the fair's VIP area, only ten or so reporters were left, and we'd run out of questions. She looked up, seeming a bit startled by the silence, and drew a few more.
Nobody asked her about the natural gas pipeline which looks all but dead. Nobody asked her about the current governor's attempt to undoe her oil tax policy in Alaska. Both of which were her signature pieces of legislation. No reporter even mentioned her quitting on Alaskans.
And nobody is the wiser about her presidential aspirations. She did say that she would decide in September, and that if she did run, it would be a very unconventional campaign, according to the LA Times:
"Each campaign that I've ever run in these 20 years of elected office has been kind of unconventional, right, Todd?" Palin said, turning to her husband. "I've always been outspent 2:1, 5:1, 10:1. I never won any polls heading into election night but usually won the election."
She said that if she were to run, she wouldn't do things the "traditional" way. "We want new! We want new energy, we want conviction and passion and candidness, even if through that candidates make mistakes," she said.
If she runs, she would speak from the heart about "where I think America needs to head and how I think we can turn the economy around, and here's what I've done in the past to show you truly a foundation of where my beliefs come from, of what works — in a small town, in a state, in a big industry like oil and gas," said Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee. "What is it that can be done to turn things around. I'll express that."
Republicans here were scratching their heads at the timing of her visit to the Iowa State Fair, a popular venue for presidential candidates. Why did she hit the first-in-the-nation caucus state now, other than to distort the playing field or suck the spotlight from declared candidates who are campaigning for Saturday's Iowa straw poll?
Palin said she's simply resuming her One Nation bus tour — and that she didn't think she was stealing any candidate's thunder. She's seriously considering entering the race, she said, and she thinks her followers deserve an answer soon.
"This is what I've told Todd over and over: I don't want to be seen as or perceived as stringing people along, asking supporters, 'Oh, don't jump in there on someone else's bandwagon.' That's not fair to them after another month or two goes by. They need to know who it is that they can jump behind."
Insiders in Iowa politics are skeptical that a White House bid by Palin is realistic.
Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn, in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, said Palin will be back in Iowa over the Labor Day weekend to talk to a tea party group, "so maybe we'll get some more clues at that point." But, he added: "To be successful in Iowa, you need to be on the ground, giving regular Iowans a chance to look you in the eye and ask a tough question."
Asked how she'd run her campaign, Palin said it would be unconventional and grass-roots-based.
"I wouldn't be out there looking for hires out of that political bubble that seem to result in the same old ideas," she said.
While the announced GOP candidates work it like they mean it across the state, she has popped in only twice, in late June for the premiere of the documentary "The Undefeated" in Pella and on Friday.
During the June trip, she met with Iowa Republicans Becky Beach of Des Moines and Moe Sinclair of Melrose, who talked up the State Fair during a lunch date.
Palin arrived at the State Fair with Beach and Sinclair about 10:45 a.m., just as presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty was finishing up with his pork-chop-flipping photo op. After coming in Gate 7, a back-door entrance used by fair participants bringing in calves and horses, Palin headed straight for the Cattle Barn.
Beaming, she chatted with camera-armed fairgoers as aides and security watched over her, including an off-duty Des Moines police officer in a Hawaiian shirt.
Palin told reporters she's not trying to snub Iowans.
"I do understand the passion Iowa has for this early process. I love it," she said. "It's part of the political heritage of America and I respect it."
But she said it was too early to enter the race, and added: "Hopefully, if I were to jump in there, my ideas would have an appeal not to just Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina but every other state, too."
Palin said she was in Iowa for just a day.
"I don't want to step on anybody's toes so I won't be in the state tomorrow," she said, referring to today's straw poll.
But next month "has to be kind of a drop-dead timeline" for deciding whether or not she will make a bid for the White House herself, she said.
At one point, her husband, Todd, told the horde of reporters: "You guys are killing me. I'm starving."
But it was Palin who chose to linger. She praised former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich for calling out the press for focusing on the minutiae of the race, rather than issues, but cheerfully answered questions until the reporters tailing her had nothing left to ask.
Palin, after telling supporters in an email Wednesday that she wanted to try fried butter on a stick, ate a corn dog for lunch.
Palin also appeared on "The Sean Hannity Show," a conservative program on Fox News, at 8 p.m. live from the fair.
She threw a miniature football to the crowd soon after taking the stage, gaining loud cheers. Hundreds of people surrounded the stage, set up in a street near the Agriculture Building.
On the program, Palin praised Newt Gingrich for calling out moderators of the Fox News/Iowa GOP presidential debate Thursday for so-called "gotcha" questions.
