If You Thought Sarah Palin was Big in 2008...

Sarah Palin's speeches in Anaheim and Reno show that she is where she needs to be two years out and is ahead of schedule on her way to being where she needs to be four years out after the 2008 election. This blogger said then if you thought she was big in 2008, just wait until 2012. She'll be a behemoth. She's already a behemoth now.

Palin has had to take 8 years of a governorship and cram it into 2 1/2 years. She has had to take years of professional speaking training and cram it into two years. Ronald Reagan had more time to hone his craft than did Sarah Palin, but it doesn't hurt that he wrote the directions and Palin now has them. This is exactly what our country needs at this point in time. We need not wait for our next great leader any longer. She is arriving.

Pundits and theorists talked about how Palin would get stronger with age. Maybe 2016 or 2020 would be her time. Under normal conditions, I'd be prone to agree with them. But following the 2008 election and the near miss with losing our democracy to a socialist infiltration, it soon became apparent that time frames would need to be compressed.

Missing a question about Supreme Court case decisions or not answering what newspapers you read out of frustration are not disqualifiers for higher office. They are tiny moments in the large life of a politician who will have said millions of words, made thousands of decisions and given numerous speeches. It doesn't stop her from having the courage to speak from her convictions. These are the teeth picking moments in a much faster evolution of a candidate than most expected.

The liberal media continues to channel the looney left which goes Palin daffy every time she has triumphs like those in Anaheim and Reno this past week. She baited the left with her comment to the Tea Party not to party like it's 1773 again just yet. Then she nailed them with a tweet after they took the hook. The media no longer plays her. She plays them now.

Sarah Palin has nailed down her policy. She's nailed down her speaking style. She's nailed down her outreach and appeal to regular people. Many knew she was going to recover from the media brutality and get back into the lead where she could start taking charge of the conservative movement when she was ready. According to my watch, that should be... oh.... right about now.

We are not just watching a citizen from Alaska coming into her own politically and gaining a credible seat at the national debate, we are watching the process of how a great leader is formed. As Sarah Palin moves into the next stage of her journey to the presidency, she will continue to grow stronger (how scary is that, libs?). The evolution of this candidate will take her far beyond the advanced point where she is already now. What comes after behemoth?

It's like watching Ronald Reagan all over again. She need not worry about her poll numbers. She is building it. They will come.

For more, read here.

My Grand Old Party

There are a lot of conservatives and Tea Partiers who came out of the 2008 loss distancing themselves from the Republican Party. Rightfully so. They were upset at the spending, the talk of moderating and compromising with the liberals and party leadership not of speaking out to harshly against social security reform, immigration reform and cutting spending. The despair was setting in. The heart of this Reagan Republican not only ached for my country, but it also ached for my Party. It is a party that can now be fixed right: the way it was when Reagan led it.

The Tea Party movement has harnished the energy of the silent majority, Reagan conservatives and libertarians to formulate a Constitutional approach toward governing. It is exactly the model this country needs. As a movement once feared to go third party and one that has held a high threshold when it comes to the party establishment, it is a force that can be harnassed for great good.

I consider myself both a Tea Partier and a Republican. As a conservative, I am both. As a Reaganite, I see how the party is supposed to be run. So when I tell you I'm a Republican, picture a young guy during the Reagan years enjoying a great economy and working hard for what he earned. Reagan was the kind of Republican that should define the party. Today, the party can be fueled by a movement which now has an opportunity to infiltrate that party, take it over and mold it into... well... the image that this Republican thinks his party to look like.

During the darkest days between 2006 and 2008, the Republican Party was putting its finishing touches on Medicare prescription drug benefits and increasing the amount of spending without question to meet the requests of agency and department heads and congresspeople who were loading on the pork. Talk among Republican circles was defeatist. The country was moving left in their untested opinion. As such, the party was talking of moderation. They nominated a moderate as their presidential candidate and the inside argument was about putting Joe Lieberman on the ticket. Long gone were the days of Ronald Reagan.

Or so we thought.

This is not about dreaming of things gone by or wanting to relive your younger days. This is about a time tested theory about the basic natural laws of governing that if not tinkered with, nearly always produces periods of great economic freedom and a stronger devoution to faith.

We can do it again, in our own way and in our modern time. Follow the directions, put someone in a leadership role that is the closest thing you got to Ronald Reagan and let the people rule from the grassroots up. The rabble? They know the Constitution a million times better than a lot of these ritzy ritzy folk that are currently in charge of protecting and defending it.

My Grand Old Party will shine again. America will once again be a shining city on a hill. It will take time. Phase one is taking place now on Nov 2nd. Phase two will be in 2012. No one has yet mentioned phase 3 yet. So here it is.

With the proper leadership, all in the movement can share a seat at the table of Constitutional freedom, economic recovery and true repeal and reform of progressive laws. It will take the term from 2012 to 2016 to accomplish this. It will be like trying to turn a large boat that turns slow as quickly as possible. It will not be until after 2016 that we will begin to see great prosperity again in America. Yet, we will all enjoy the ride getting there together.

We can be led by a lightning rod, a power player and a game changer who was named vice presidential candidate by the moderate we once lamented over. She spoke of (and like) Reagan at the GOP rally in Anaheim Saturday 10/16/10. We have the one who can lead us with a Reagan-like sense of the future based on confidence in the proven techniques which worked in the past combined with the modern technology of today.

Sarah Palin walked into the hall Saturday night to an electric crowd which chanted her name, cheered at every landing of a one liner and was simply vocal and enthusiastic about its chances in the 2010 election. In many ways, it was a pre-victory rally. In many ways, it was Sarah Palin's triumphant ride into the heart of California Republicanism. It was the melding of the grass roots with the future of Republicanism. She infiltrated the party on our behalf Saturday night. For the first time, we really envisioned our way in with her.

Time, Klein, Scherer and 'Ignorami'

You can check out my intellectual inferiority here.

Playing the Media Game, and Winning

When the Democrat National Committee named Celtic Diva of Blue Oasis as their official Alaska blogger, little did they know that they inadvertently created an environment ripe for hundreds of conservative blogs which would sprout up quickly following the 2008 election. Conservatives might have been beaten and down after that fateful day in November, but when the loudmouths of the left continued their vicious assaults, particularly on Sarah Palin, conservatives responded. The cyber battlefield stage was set and activists who were rising up on the right were about to get the most politically active they have ever been in their life.

When President Obama talked about "hand to hand combat" in the halls of Congress which would follow huge Republican gains in November, it reminded this blogger about the keyboard to keyboard combat that we have been watching in the blogosphere for the last two years.

The liberals easily owned the right in cyberspace prior to Obama's election. Conservatives and Republicans were the silent majority who had jobs, families and lives. They didn't see a need to blog. They assumed that most Americans saw it the way they did - as grown ups.

But that changed the day the Alaska bloggers and the bloggers who post over on the Daily Kos went overboard. The Tea Party movement was picking up steam and the hundreds of thousands who attended Sarah Palin rallies when she was on the trail with McCain became part of the movement and eventually watched as their leader became a prominent player in the grassroots backlash to the liberal policies of the Obama administration. Sarah Palin was vilified. The Tea Party was vilified. The Alaska bloggers and their counterparts in the lower 48 were getting free coverage by a mainstream media that was all but glad to run with stories about Tea partiers spewing racial epithets and Sarah Palin being under federal indictment.

But the tide has turned.

Today there are hundreds of conservative blogs which are energized by articulate people who have become politically active out of necessity. There is a country to save.

The liberal blogs still spew their hate, but it is regurgitated hate now. They've run out of ammo. They may have even run out of things to make up. They were the masters of cyberspace two years ago. Today, they are overshadowed by the focus on the facts that has become the acid that burns the written products of their relentless lying.

With strokes of the keyboard and clicks of the mouse, Sarah Palin leads her minions from her Facebook page. Palinistas debunk liberal myths and clang their swords of words with the left, always softening the battlefield for the wielding of the rhetorical Excalibur from Alaska that mainfests itself in a tweet or a Facebook posting that finishes the job.

Sarah Palin is a case study in how to beat the smear machine. Most people would have been destroyed by the relentless battering she has taken. Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush can attest to that. Although, Gingrich is making a comeback, the rise and fall of a great Speakership was contingent on the dissatisfaction of the mainstream media with a conservative revival that threatened its elitist hold on the electorate.

When that happened again, the media unsheathed their swords and politically bloodied one of the greatest warriors to appear in the arena since Ronald Reagan. That warrior tended to her wounds and came out stronger, faster, more savvy than ever. She was big in 2008. She's even bigger now. She will be even bigger in 2012.

They can't stop her now. They've tried everything and it doesn't work anymore.

Sarah Palin is not only a survivor of the media smear campaign. She is a teacher as well. Today, she advises political candidates, particularly women, how to survive the media beatings. She has helped the likes of Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley and Christine O'Donnell.

Sean Hannity asked Sarah Palin "what advice do you give -- you have lived under fire -- to those candidates that now are going to be the victims of these smears?" Palin responded:

Yes, well, remember, what they are doing. This is coming from Obama's presidential campaign book, which goes back to Alinsky's campaign book, "Rules for Radicals," which Obama and Michelle Obama have quoted from. And that is, the politics of personal destruction perhaps will be the only thing that you have on your opponent so you make things up about them.

You lie, you spin, you do whatever you can and you use a complicit media to assist you in this, a left-wing media to assist you in this. So these candidates just need to be prepared for those rules of radical to be applied to them. They need to stay on message, they need to stay optimistic. They need to remind the American public what the time-tested truths are that created this great nation.

This is music to the ears of conservative bloggers who have been researching and exposing the media lies and conspiracies.

Liberal bloggers no longer have their vile reported on mainstream media outlets unchallenged.

The one who they have tried to destroy is now stronger than ever. With her stilleto heel firmly on the throat of the "lamestream media," Palin has gone from being the hunted to being the hunter.

The truth is powerful once effectively articulated. Sarah Palin has become a modern day great communicator. Facts and truth are more potent weapons than lies and smears. And she wields these weapons with surgical precision.

Shades of Reagan

If we look to the past to try to understand the future, we need to look no further than to the Jimmy Carter presidency between 1976 and 1980. The results of high unemployment, general unhappiness with big government and the failing policies of the Carter administration guided the American people toward a new direction. Ronald Reagan was a product of an America looking for a stronger leader on the economy and national defense. The same could be said today.

It was about this time during the Carter years (around 1978) that inflation and high energy prices became an issue. Today, Fed officials are mulling inflation as a fix. And if that isn't enough to give you a dose of Carter redux, then check out the piece today on Investor's Business Daily: As Fed Prints Money, Gold, Oil Soar.

It's a remake of the same movie. Only Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter and Reagan's character is played by a woman. The parallels are amazingly similar. Consider even that people are talking about Hillary Clinton running much the same way they spoke of Teddy Kennedy running in 1980. My prediction on that is if she is not placated with the VP spot, you will see Hillary run. History says so.

Governor Palin is well in tune with the parallels. In West Palm Beach, she "implicitly addressed questions about her own electability by noting that critics also said Ronald Reagan couldn’t win in 1980," three attendees told POLITICO (h/t Conservatives4Palin). "Pointing out that the knock on Reagan was that he was also too far to the right, the former Alaska governor repeatedly invoked the 40th president and conservative icon, at one point citing the quotation he was most fond of: that America is a 'shining city on a hill.'”

Conservatives4Palin points out that "Governor Palin is a lot closer to Obama now than Reagan was to Carter at a much later stage in the election as Carted led by a "comfortable margin of about 25%" in 1980, not 1978."

Palin is playing her potential presidential run directly from the Reagan playbook. And why not? The key to being successful is to find a successful person that you admire and emulate them. If Palin has mastered this success principle, the world is more than her oyster.

"In the latest and clearest example of her plans, Palin met with some 50 national conservative leaders Wednesday in Palm Beach, Florida where she discussed economic and diplomatic policy and led some to declare that she's in the race" according to Paul Bedard of US News and World Report.

"This was an indication that she's strongly considering running," said one insider. "She was very knowledgeable and gave intelligent answers, despite how she's been characterized," added the insider. "And she was extremely charming."

This leads me to the conclusion that the whole dumb meme was simply a result of "I fear you, therefore I must smear you." These conservative big wigs obviously did not find anything lacking in Sarah Palin's evolution as a potential presidential candidate.

We can turn the clock back to turn it ahead. In 2012, Sarah Palin will be more than ripe, a political behemoth in her own right - an example of how someone from a small town like Dixon, Monmouth and Galesburg Illinois Wasilla Alaska can do the work required to become a great speaker, knowledgeable in policy and in touch with the people to the point where they can become president of the greatest country on earth.

Eddie Burke on Patrick's World USA

Eddie Burke was my guest this week on my BlogTalk Radio show Patrick's World USA. We talk Tea Party and Palin. Eddie is right on the money. Hear what he has to say.

How Untrue Will Geoffrey Dunn's Lies of Sarah Palin Be?

A friend asked me what he should look for when reading an opinion piece. I told him you look for intent. Is the writer painting a positive picture of his subject, a neutral one or a negative one? Then you look at past writings to get a feel for a writer's history on the subject. In Geoffrey Dunn's case, the intent is to present Palin negatively and his history is one of Palin derangement.

Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin is scheduled to come out around, oh I don't know (pick a date at random), February 2011. Coincidently, this is around the time when candidates will begin announcing 2012 presidential bids. Expect this concerted effort by an obsessed aging award winning writer of fiction to besmirch the reputation of Sarah Palin to be a truth bending, mind twisting compilation of PDS sufferers' greatest hits with some deep tracks into the early days as city counselwoman and Mayor of Wasilla. In other words, expect the mental gymnastics required to reach his conclusions to continue.
Look for clues in Geoffrey Dunn's style. For example, watch how he conveniently ignores facts or uses hyperbole to explain away such things as sock puppetry at Team Sarah.

Both The Weekly Standard and Victor Morton at Inside Blogitics – a weekly column devoted to blog politics in the Plugged-In section of the Washington Times – picked up this story about online posers, well, posing as conservative Team Sarah site members – “sock puppets” – and then deliberately posting nasty, racist comments in order to make the whole site and its founders look bad.

And, to add insult to injury, Geoffrey Dunn of the HuffingtonPost jumped in the fray and alleged that the TeamSarah site was “ugly” in its practice of “mean-spirited bigotry” and “nastiness.” Seems to me it would be appropriate for Mr. Dunn to post a retraction and an apology. (I don’t see one yet.)

The administrators at TeamSarah and Bill Collier over at The Freedom Congress have ample facts and evidence, including screen shots, user IDs and related IP addresses, proving that the unsavory onslaught of the “provocateurs” was planned and deliberate. And, of course, Team Sarah has banned the evil infiltrators and done their best to clean things up so the site can remain, as it was intended, respectful and decent.

Dunn has gone so far as to accuse Palin of plagiarizing Newt Gingrich in a speech, even though she gave him credit. Dunn used the death of Governor Wally Hickel to attack Sarah Palin. Although there are no ties to Paul Lundahl who did The Wasilla Project, both Dunn and Lundahl are from the San Francisco area. Expect Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin to contain interviews with some of the same recycled malcontents in Alaska who were sources for Lundahl's documentary (The Wasilla Project's website has since been scrubbed) and the Vanity Fair piece that went down in flames.

Dunn gives shoutouts to "my friends in Alaska," Jeanne Devon and Shannyn Moore in one of his pieces. These are the same points of contact who are in touch with Alaska's malcontents. Don't forget that Vanity Fair raided Moore's rolodex for its last hit piece on Palin.

Ask yourself why the Huffington Post didn't start really building a stable of anti-Palin writers until after the 2008 election was over. They knew full well that the immediate talk of the time of Palin as a possible 2012 contender would require them to continue their attacks on her. For someone whose first hit piece on Sarah Palin was written two weeks following the 2008 election, Dunn was "Robert Gibbs silly" quick to describe Sarah Palin's allegations about Pete Rouse as "delusional." Isn't it strange how liberal Palin haters are quick to throw around supercilious terms rather than address the questions of a smear campaign head on?

The hits that will come out against Sarah Palin will not pop up out of the blue in response to any announcement on her part to run for president in 2012. These hits have been in the works since 2008. The preparation to destroy Sarah Palin's 2012 run began on November 3, 2008. While the smear merchants tried to convince the American people that Sarah Palin is too dumb to be president, they're no dummies themselves. They know damn well she can become president. Why else would Dunn have spent the last two years doing research for a hit book that just so happens to be scheduled to hit the shelves in February 2011?

Pallin' Around With Michael Steele

When you are in the process of infiltrating the Republican Party for the purpose of returning it to its traditional Reagan roots and guiding it back toward the platform it supposedly stands on, what's a few hundred thousand dollars among friends?

Sarah Palin got hosed when she was handed the bill for being vetted as the 2008 vice presidential candidate and then was handed another bill for fighting an ethics charge that stemmed from clothing that the RNC purchased for her initially without her input. It is only fitting that she would come to an agreement with the GOP chairman that these bills would be paid by the Republican Party (as they should have been) and that she in turn would reward them for their appropriate behavior by fundraising for the RNC.

Let the liberals and Palin's Republican opponents whine all they want. Let's put the cards on the table and let the hand speak for itself. Sarah Palin is a money machine. She draws large crowds, a large number of donors and sends her detractors into a tizzy every time her name is mentioned. In the words of Sharron Angle, she's got "juice."

This positions her well to run for president in 2012. Those familiar with the precepts of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" will understand that one doesn't bludgeon a political party into civil war, strife and an erosion of its machinery and influence if you're not happy with the way it works. You simply infiltrate it and make it work right.

Befriending the party chairman early and then doing battle against the party's more establishment-type insiders is the work of a gutsy Republican who wants the party to return to its greatness. Anything else is just "take my ball and go home" politics. Palin will have no talk off breaking off into a third party. She has shown she's a master at public relations by using her fundraising abilities and powers of persuasion within the arena of ideas to position herself in such a way that she can take advantage of the good favor she can earn from an alliance with Mr. Steele.

Don't be cynical about Sharron Angle's conversation with Scott Ashjian. He is the hand picked "Tea Party plant" of Harry Reid. Of course he's going to leak tape of her - a tape in which she was telling the truth about the "juice" that the Tea Party has and how the Republican establishment went wrong. Sarah Palin has the "juice" too and the GOP knows it.

We all know the Republican Party is not about being the most conservative party it can be. It is shifting to the right because of the pressures of its grass roots and the Tea Party. It is also shifting to the right because the polls are showing that conservative ideas are resonating. The GOP is in the business of winning elections, not setting ideological tone. The sooner it realizes that the conservative movement, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin are a winning combination much in the party's best interests, the sooner it will recognize how much they really need to put that combination front and center. The time has come to put an end to the crony insider influence and the go along to get along strategies and give the party back to the people.

The conservative movement and the Republican establishment may be like estranged spouses who are now finding out they need each other because they are stronger together than apart. Yes, the establishment is going to have to stop the "cheating" by palling around with liberal ideas in the name of "compromise." Yes the establishment is going to have to stop the out of control spending if this marriage is to ever work. And the drinking - of the Potomoc water - also has to stop.

Watching Sarah Palin and Michael Steele "schmoozing over dinner" should give us hope that this is one "marriage" that can be saved. If anything, they should "do it for the children." A country is at stake.

Rouse's Silly Role In Smearing Palin

Robert Gibbs dismissed the idea that incoming Obama administration chief of staff Pete Rouse was involved in the smear campaign against Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign. Here's the exchange with the press secretary and Jake Tapper of ABC:

TAPPER: OK. And Governor Palin, former Governor Palin has insinuated that Rouse -- she suspected Rouse was part of a plot against her. She wrote about this in her book. She's tweeted about it -- tweeted suggestions about this recently. I was just wondering if you guys have any comment on that.

GIBBS: No. I mean, you know, it -- it's a fairly silly accusation that is baseless.

Gibbs' quick dismissal of this as well as the question of state citizenship is a deflection of a question that deserves an answer, not a childish response. Since the press secretary is unwilling to answer it, allow me.

Ethicsgate

(Rouse stopped voting absentee in March of 2010 after 27 years)

Let's connect the dots by first introducing you to Pete Rouse. Rachelle Friberg of Conservative Girl With A Voice writes:

You may or may not be familiar with the name Peter Rouse, but you should be. Rouse, an Alaskan, is a senior advisor to Barack Obama with an office between David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. While being advisor to the president is a huge honor in itself, it is how Rouse got the job that is the main issue at hand. Rouse's mother grew up in AK and Rouse once served as chief of staff to former Lieutenant Governor Terry Miller. He is also good friends with fellow Alaskan State Senator Kim Elton, the individual who began the whole Troopergate investigation. This is an important link as NEN reports. NEN has uncovered audio of an interview Elton did with a reporter prior to the 2008 presidential election:

Elton: So this has been a fascinating year watching what's been happening back East.

Reporter: So you're an Obama man, Senator Elton?

Elton: I'm a big fan.

Reporter: Are you? Really? Is that an official endorsement?

Elton: I guess we can call it that. I've not done it any place else, but I kind of weighed in with a contribution, a couple of contributions this last year, but yeah you can make it official now.

So, the same individual who started Troopergate, was a "fan" and ardent supporter of then-candidate Obama? Elton is the kind of guy who doesn't seem to be able to keep his mouth shut. NEN uncovered another audio tape in which Elton admitted to talking to Rouse a couple times a month about the election: "One of my great friends, somebody I talk to a couple times a month is Pete Rouse who is chief of staff to Barack Obama." How ironic that an advisor to Obama be in such close communication with the individual, a democrat, who started the first ethics investigation against Sarah? But for the Obama campaign, one investigation was not enough. In typical Chicago-style politics, Sarah was a threat, so the Obama campaign continued on its mission to destroy her. NEN reported that the Obama campaign contacted the union for Alaska State Troopers, which is the union Mike Wooten (Sarah's ex-brother-in-law and trooper identified in the investigation) belonged to. This communication resulted in another ethics complaint- this time by the union for Alaska State Troopers.

Here are some astute observations regarding Troopergate by one writer who was observing the events as they happened. Holly Robichaud wrote on The Boston Herald's blog "Lone Republican:"

Elton is a long-time friend of Pete Rouse, who was Senator Obama’s chief of staff and campaign advisor. (Rouse currently serves in the White House as a Senior Advisor.) According to CNN reports after Governor Sarah Palin was selected for the GOP ticket, the Obama campaign contacted the PSEA Union that represented Trooper Wooten and filed the phony complaint against her.

The connection between Elton and the Obama campaign should have served as a warning sign, but the liberal media wanted Palin’s scalp so they overlooked the relationship.

On several occasions Freedom of Information Requests were filed for emails, phone logs and other communications between the Obama campaign and Senator Elton. They were refused on the claim that FOIAs do not apply to legislators. Why not disclose all information in order to make the investigation legitimate? Because Elton had no intention of being impartial.

In fact, his investigation became so politically charged that 5 state legislators filed suit against the Chairman, Senator Hollis French, and the Democrats’ handpicked investigator, Stephen Branchflower.

In an attempt to restore impartiality to the proceedings, Alaska’s Speaker of the House, John Harris requested a special meeting with the Legislative Council, but his request was refused.

Elton continued on his witch hunt to destroy Palin by allowing the investigator to write the report before witnesses were even interviewed, misconstrue certain evidence and disregard evidence that was helpful to Palin. 

When Sarah Palin gave her rollout speech followed by the RNC speech on September 4, 2008, she became an instant threat to the Obama candidacy. On September 9, 2008, according to The Next Right, "an Alaskan process server called [Bill Bennett's radio show] to talk about how many calls she's getting from media organizations trying to get court records on Sarah Palin, her son Trak, and their friends." Palin had helped McCain come within a statistical dead heat with Obama in the polls and the Democrats were getting nervous.

Commenters at Free Republic speculated that presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign operative David Axelrod was involved with getting Troopergate to conveniently hit the newsstands during the height of Palinmania on August 30, 2008. Axelrod’s fingerprints appear in Alaska immediately after Palin is announced as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

Dan Riehl covers the story in detail on his blog:

From there they drove huge blog bursts on the Liberal side of the web and were picked up by the media for that reason. This process placed a series of lies, distortions and false allegations targeted at Palin in the mainstream news cycle - again, at the very same time Obama was attacking her daily on the stump.

David Axelrod began working very closely with Anita Dunn, who along with Rouse "advised Tony Knowles in the 2006 Alaska Gubernatorial campaign" according to Conservatives4Palin.com.

It’s quite clear that the Obama team was thrown into disarray by the Palin pick because over the next few weeks they threw every resource into undermining her credibility. Indeed at times it was as if she was Obama’s presidential opponent, rather than McCain.

Almost all of the misinformation about Governor Palin came from Alaska, partly from local Democrats like Kim Elton (of Troopergate fame) and from “progressive” bloggers. Publicly, of course, there were no Team Obama fingerprints to be found on these slanders but it beggars belief to assume that these were all spontaneous outpourings from concerned citizens. Some might suggest a whiff of orchestration and who else better to help connect the dots than someone closely involved with Alaskan Democrats since at least 2004 – someone like Anita Dunn.

Pete Rouse "was the one who recruited Elton, a former journalist, into politics" according to the Anchorage Daily News. Rouse also worked with Anita Dunn for Tom Daschle.

Stacy Drake at ConservativesPalin makes this connection:

In 2008, after John McCain selected Governor Palin to be his running mate, the Obama campaign set up a political hit-team called "Alaskan Mythbusters." The group was headed up by Rouse associate, Tony Knowles. The "Mythbusters" had the ironic task of creating misleading political attacks, specifically on Governor Palin. They also spent a lot of time talking about Kim Elton's "ethics" investigation.

Stacy Drake's piece on A Time For Choosing also points out:

Barack Obama has ties to Alaskan’s For Truth as well as the Wasilla Project and Mythbusters. And with his man Pete Rouse’s lifelong ties to Alaska, it’s just not much of a leap to understand this deliberate and coordinated effort to destroy Sarah Palin all leads to an office somewhere at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

With all the speculation about Rouse, we can't overlook the role that the guy who ended up in the office next to him played. Axelrod the AstroTurfer most likely carried out the details of the operation during the presidential campaign.

Andy Martin explains how "smears are an integral part of any Barack Obama/David Axelrod operation." Martin writes "Obama controls a sophisticated network of left-wing bloggers and mainstream media dupes."

On September 8, 2008,  FactCheck.org noticed an unusual amount of internet traffic smearing Sarah Palin.  Eric Erickson at Human Events pointed his finger specifically at David Axelrod when he wrote that "When those grassroots attacks are manufactured by public relations firms, they aren’t real: they’re astroturfed -- fake attacks designed to look like a grassroots movement."

Michelle Malkin wrote "Rusty Shackleford — with help from Jane of Armies of Liberation, Stable Hand, the Jawa team, Dan Riehl, Ace of Spades, and Patterico – traced a Palin-bashing YouTube video to a Democrat public relations firm, Winner and Associates, and one of its employees, Ethan S. Winner." Axelrod is known for his Astroturfing companies. But instead of doing the video in house, he farmed it out. Malkin explained it on Fox News.

Republicans filed suit to stop the Troopergate investigation because it was clear that it was being conducted strictly for partisan reasons - to damage Palin's vice presidential candidacy. ABC News reported:

The suit, filed in Alaska Superior Court, takes aim at Stephen Branchflower, the former prosecutor leading the probe; Sen. Hollis French, the Democratic state lawmaker chosen to manage the investigation; and Sen. Kim Elston [sic], the Democratic chair of the Republican-dominated Legislative Council, which voted unanimously to conduct the probe.

All three men, the suit alleges, have conflicts which prohibit their involvement in the investigation. French and Elston have publicly supported Obama, the suit notes.

The suit claims Branchflower "developed a friendship" with the fired official at the center of the probe, Walt Monegan, when Branchflower was a prosecutor and Monegan was in law enforcement. It asks that if the probe continues, all three men be removed.

The suit was dismissed by Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski, who was appointed by Governor William Sheffield (D-AK) in 1985. Also, the mainstream media never did any investigation into the allegations put forth in the complaint. In other words, they ran with stories based on reports from Democrat insiders without balancing them againsts statements from McCain campaign officials or researching the partisan nature of the probe.

Knowing that Alaskans Rouse and Elton (with Axelrod handling the "pr") would do everything they could to help Barack Obama's campaign by driving the Troopergate investigation, Governor Palin short circuited the partisan legislative committee probe by filing an ethics complaint against herself with the State Personnel Board. According to juneauempire.com:

Branchflower's report came out Oct. 10, 2008, in the heat of a bitter presidential campaign. Then, Palin filed her complaint against herself on Troopergate with the Personnel Board. Its report, done by the Personnel Board-hired counsel Tim Petumenos, cleared Palin and came out the evening before the election.

According to the Anchorage Daily News:

In a five-page response issued Friday night, Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein, accuses Branchflower and Democratic Sen. Hollis French, who oversaw the investigation, of using the probe in a partisan attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo."

Van Flein says Branchflower's finding that Palin violated the ethics act is flawed because she received no monetary benefit from whatever actions she and her husband are accused of. He cited several prior ethics investigations.

"The common thread of all of these Ethics Act cases is money and the use of a government position to personally gain," Van Flein's statement says.

"Here, there is no accusation, no finding and no facts that money or financial gain to the Governor was involved in the decision to remove Monegan," the governor's attorney says. "There can be no ethics violations under these circumstances."

The McCain-Palin campaign also responded.

Because Branchflower's report does not recommend any particular penalty for Palin, it shows the investigation was outside the Legislature's authority, campaign Meghan Stapleton said.

"The Palins make no apologies for wanting to protect their family and the public interest by reporting to appropriate authorities the conduct of a threatening and abusive trooper," Stapleton said.

The legislative committee's credibility was ruined by the connection between Kim Elton, Pete Rouse and other Democrat operatives. Gary P. Jackson reports:

Sarah was cleared, and democrats Kim Elton, Hollis French, Beth Kerttula, Stephen Branchflower, and others were taken to the wood shed for hiding evidence that cleared Palin, and even used the wrong statute as the basis for their witch hunt, Barack Obama “rewarded” Kim Elton with a make work job at the Department of Interior. A little Chicago style pay-for-play.

Of course, no discussion of this fine group of individuals would be complete without reminding everyone that Pete Rouse, now a Senior White House adviser, basically founded, recruited, and coordinated the Alaska Mafia from his cushy D.C. office. Rouse used Mafia members to continually plant false stories about Sarah Palin in the media, as well as continually file all of those phony ethics complaints against her, complaints that would cost the Alaska tax payers over $2 million to deal with.

To this day, if you see a story about Sarah Palin that come from far left hate sites like the Huffington Post (which are then picked up by the “mainstream media“) just know that Rouse, or one of his people has something to do with it. That’s how these people roll.

How's that for a silly, baseless accusation, Mr. Gibbs? Do you care to be a little more substantive next time you answer a question like that? You can't flick the whole nest off thinking it's just one bee. The American people want an explanation from the White House press secretary, not just a silly song and a dance.