Yes, the Democratic Party is still dysfunctional—just ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, both of whom have recently had to intervene to calm squabbling Democrats. There's bickering in the administration, too. But now Republicans are starting to rival their opponents in their chronic condition of family strife.

For sheer disruptive value, no uncle who hogs the gravy can match Palin. She is wildly popular among conservatives, but her book—which will explode in full flower next week—will re-open old wounds. After being attacked anonymously by former McCain aides for months, she is pushing back. Charges and counter-charges will fly, and the bickering is likely to occasion a new round in the GOP debate among moderates, conservatives, insiders, outsiders, and self-styled outsiders over how the Republican Party should proceed.

www.slate.com/id/2235465/



Even Sarah Palin's media strategy requires her to "go rogue." The Wall Street Journal reports that with her open-to-everyone Facebook page and small-city book tour, the ex-governor and VP-nominee is bypassing the traditional publicity machine and going straight to her "dedicated and vocal" supporters. Rather than throwing parties in New York and D.C. to hype the release of her already-bestselling book, Going Rogue, (fact-checked by the AP here), Palin is taking a book tour through places like Noblesville, Indiana, and Roanoke, Virginia, those "real America" cities she mentioned during the campaign. She will ride from place to place in a tour bus emblazoned with images of her face, just one in a series of moves that could safely be called "unorthodox." Those would include resigning as Alaska's governor midway through her term, threatening to sue bloggers who made her mad, and putting forth policy prescriptions on Facebook. But some political commentators say it's working. One consultant who has worked with her with her says Palin is doing a remarkable job of controlling her message, and Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard thinks she could still make a serious run for the presidency if she wants to.

slatest.slate.com/id/2235724/entry/4/



The AP factchecks Palin:

Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time. Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush — a package she seemed to support at the time.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091...SLAhyhsnwcF



In a recent Gallup poll, 63% of Americans said they would "never" consider voting for her for President. A candidate for president would normally wish to counteract such a negative impression. Palin's post-campaign actions have reinforced them.

Instead of attending to her job as Alaska governor, she quit halfway through her first term.

Instead of following Charles Krauthammer's advice to "go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues," she has cashed in on the paid speaking circuit, always off the record.

She has declined to face questioning from the press. She has been drawn into an unseemly public flame war with the father of her grandchild.

She did no fundraising for the two Republican gubernatorial candidates on the ballot in November. She has had little of substance to say about the huge public decisions of the first Obama year. What she has said has been inflammatory and untrue: especially her accusation that the Obama plan would haul Down's syndrome children before "death panels" empowered to deny them life-saving medical care.

www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html


Palin is the candidate who can never survive a factcheck or run on her record . . . which makes her agreeable to people who get their facts from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, people who want, demand and expect to be told what they want to hear . . .Palin regularly denounces "media bias" but she can't live without the cameras, it's all about being on-camera, repeating the safe, familiar lines the "real Americans" want to hear . . . she may not know foreign policy, but she understands her "base" very well, and to hell with the rest of them . . .