Soon-to-be-former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is taking more hits — from Republicans.
Despite talk from some of her staunchest conservative fans that the press is going after her and that it’s liberals outside and inside her party (yes, there are some who charge the Republican party is controlled by liberals) who are trying to do her in, two new articles indicate that some of her biggest criticism is coming from Republican professionals — professionals who are not liberals. It’s clear that Palin is proving to be as polarizing a figure within her own beset party as she has proven to be in the country at large.
The fact that Palin has a steep political hill to climb is now underscored by a new poll indicating that if a large part of the voting public — including many Republicans — have doubts about her abilities and experience, even if they do agree with her that the news media has been tough on her.
According to a new article in the New York Times, the events preceding Palin’s resignation as Governor were peppered with almost amateurish political bungles — and ignored advice from professionals who sought to help her become stronger politically:
In late March, a senior official from the Republican Governors Association headed for Alaska on a secret mission. Sarah Palin was beset by such political and personal turmoil that some powerful supporters determined an intervention was needed to pull her governorship, and her national future, back from the brink.
The official, the association’s executive director, Nick Ayers, arrived with a memorandum containing firm counsel, according to several people who know its details: Make a long-term schedule and stick to it, have staff members set aside ample and inviolable family time to replenish your spirits, and build a coherent home-state agenda that creates jobs and ensures re-election.
Like so much of the advice sent Ms. Palin’s way by influential supporters, it appeared to be happily received and then largely discarded, barely slowing what was, in retrospect, an inexorable march toward the resignation she announced 10 days ago.
Ms. Palin had returned to her home state from the presidential campaign as one of the hopeful prospects in her struggling party, even if she had much to prove to her detractors. Standing before the Legislature in January, she vowed to retake her office with “optimism and collaboration and hard work to get the job done.”
But interviews in Alaska and in Washington show that a seemingly relentless string of professional and personal troubles quickly put that goal out of reach.
One tidbit which indicates how she prioritized:
Yet to the dismay of some advisers, Ms. Palin dived into the fray, seeming to relish the tabloid-ready fights that consumed her as the work of the state at times went undone.
And more on what she chose to battle:
Even Ms. Palin’s supporters came to believe that she was losing focus amid all the fighting.
“It was very relentless,” said State Representative John Coghill, a Republican. “My only criticism of her was she probably paid too much attention to it.”
Read it in full for all of the details. It (correctly or not) paints a portrait of someone who went with the flow of controversies instead of effectively defusing or containing them so the focus could remain on the actual job of running the state.
Meanwhile, the L.A. Times has a piece headlined “Republican pundits open fire on Sarah Palin” — and it’s a medley of GOPers decidedly unimpressed with Palin. Here’s just a small portion of a high quotable article:
Since announcing her resignation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been pummeled by critics who have called her incoherent, a quitter, a joke and a “political train wreck.”
And those were fellow Republicans talking.
Palin has been a polarizing figure from the moment she stepped off the tundra into the bright lights last summer as John McCain’s surprise vice presidential running mate. Some of that hostility could be expected, given the hyper-partisanship of today’s politics.
What is remarkable is the contempt Palin has engendered within her own party and the fact that so many of her GOP detractors are willing, even eager, to express it publicly — even with Palin an early front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Some admit their preference that she stay in Alaska and forget about any national ambitions.
“I am of the strong opinion that, at present day, she is not ready to be the leading voice of the GOP,” said Todd Harris, a party strategist who likened Palin to the hopelessly dated “Miami Vice” — something once cool that people regard years later with puzzlement and laughter. “It’s not even that she hasn’t paid her dues. I personally don’t think she’s ready to be commander in chief.”
Actually, Palin’s resignation announcement seemed more fitting for an episode of “I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here”. MORE:
“I can’t tell you one thing she brought to the ticket,” said Stuart K. Spencer, who has been advising GOP candidates for more than 40 years. “McCain wanted to shock and surprise people, and he did — in a bad way.”
It is more than cruel sport, this picking apart of Alaska’s departing chief executive. The sniping reflects a serious split within the Republican Party between its professional ranks and some of its most ardent followers, which threatens not only to undermine Palin’s White House ambitions — if, indeed, she harbors them — but to complicate the party’s search for a way back to power in Washington.
GOP consultant Mike Murphy again criticizes Palin for not being able to garner independent and swing voters, which the L.A. Times says is debatable and subject to various factors. And then this:
In an interview Sunday in the Washington Times, Palin said she planned to write a book and campaign for candidates nationwide, regardless of party affiliation, who shared her views on limited government, national defense and energy independence.
But the reaction to her resignation from Republican candidates around the country has been telling. Asked if they planned to invite Palin to visit and campaign on their behalf, several of those facing tough races — the ones who need to do more than turn out the party faithful or collect their contributions — were not rushing out the welcome mat.
“I don’t generally need people from outside my district to do a fundraiser,” Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from the Democratic-leaning suburbs of northern Virginia, told the Hill newspaper.
“There’s others that I would have come in and campaign, and most of them would be my colleagues in the House,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) said in the same piece.
Whatever one thinks of Palin, there is no question she has been subjected to a level of internal sniping — friendly fire seems like a misnomer — that is extraordinary.
But that will increase the closer she gets to 2012, since other ambitious GOPers who have Oval Office dreams will seek to tout their skills and publicly and privately undermine her. And if there is something negative to be leaked to the media, you betcha it’ll be put out there.
A new poll underscores the task before her, if she does what most expect and runs for President:
If Sarah Palin is resigning her position as Alaska’s Governor to run for president, she faces doubts – even from Republicans – about her ability to be an effective one, according to a new CBS News poll.
Less than one in four Americans, 22 percent in particular, say she does not have the ability to be an effective president. Only 33 percent of Republicans say she does.
Sixty five percent of all Americans, and 51 percent of Republicans say she does not.
In this CBS News Poll, conducted one week after Palin announced she would resign, these assessments are even more negative than they were among registered voters before last year’s presidential election. Then, 37 percent of all registered voters thought Palin could be effective if it became necessary for her to take on the job, and 53 percent did not.
But many Americans agree with Palin’s criticisms about news media coverage of her. Forty-six percent say the media has been harder on her than they are on other political figures. And that percentage rises to 66 percent among Republicans. Only 7% say the media has been comparatively easier on Palin. Forty-four percent of all Americans, and 29 percent of Republicans, say the media treats Palin the same.
The problem: you can’t run a campaign centered on charging that the media isn’t giving you a fair shake in stories about you. Plus, negative media coverage — of substantive aspects or trivial ones — has a drip-drip-drip erosion impact on a politician’s imagery. It may not damage him or her with his or her choir, but politicians usually need more than the votes of their own choir.
That has been — and is likely to remain — Palin’s long term problem, especially because some in her own political church clearly don’t want to join the choir she’s leading and don’t like the way it presents its music to non church audiences.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.