The living embodiment of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s questionable judgement endorsed billionaire Donald Trump for the 2016 Republican nomination today. Sarah Palin, the former politician who became a reality TV show star and who has morphed into a political celebrity — sort of like the Zsa Zsa Gabor of American politics…famous for being famous — has jumped on the Trump bandwagon and could well help push him to victory in Iowa over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz:
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee who became a Tea Party sensation and a favorite of grass-roots conservatives, will endorse Donald J. Trump in Iowa on Tuesday, officials with his campaign confirmed. The endorsement provides Mr. Trump with a potentially significant boost just 13 days before the state’s caucuses.
“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president,” Ms. Palin said in a statement provided by his campaign.
Her support is the highest-profile backing for a Republican contender so far.
“I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement,” Mr. Trump said in a statement trumpeting Mrs. Palin’s decision. “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”
In Iowa, where Ms. Palin spent years developing support, the endorsement could be especially helpful.
First Draft: Sarah Palin’s Daughter Slams Ted Cruz, Fans Trump Endorsement SpeculationJAN. 19, 2016
”Over the years Palin has actually cultivated a number of relationships in Iowa,” said Craig Robinson, the former executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa and publisher of the website The Iowa Republican. ”There are the Tea Party activists who still think she’s great and a breath of fresh air, but she also did a good job of courting Republican donors in the state,” he added.Other conservatives said that Ms. Palin serves as a particularly effective shield against Senator Ted Cruz, who is battling Mr. Trump for the lead in Iowa polls by courting the state’s evangelical voters.
“Palin’s brand among evangelicals is as gold as the faucets in Trump tower,” said Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“Endorsements alone don’t guarantee victory, but Palin’s embrace of Trump may turn the fight over the evangelical vote into a war for the soul of the party,” he said.
The fact that evangelicals seem to be giving Trump a pass even though he has proved he is no Bible scholar (or perhaps reader), is a further indication of how supposed values and criteria can shift in the United States if voters find someone who they like, or who bluntly expresses their own anger — or who is simply “entertaining.” Yes, in 21st century American insults and name calling are huge entertainment. But, then, comedian Don Rickles went a long way with that, didn’t he (APOLOGY TO CLASSIC COMEDIAN DON RICKLES: I sat in front of you years ago at a Yom Kippur service in a Los Angeles synagogue and just as Trump is no Ronald Reagan he’s no Don Rickles, or Don Rickles thank G-D is no Donald Trump).
Earlier in the day the billionaire real estate mogul set off a flurry of speculation after posting a teaser online for a “very special guest” joining him at his Iowa State University rally.
Palin’s endorsement comes as recent polls put Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a dead heat in Iowa, a testing ground for the still-crowded Republican primary field.
She hinted at the news on social media, linking to a blog post by her daughter Bristol saying she hopes Palin endorses Trump with the text “Is THIS Why People Don’t like Cruz?”
While the former Alaska governor’s reputation has been diminished since the heady days of 2008 – thanks to her absence from public office and involvement in series of questionable reality television shows – she is still well liked by conservative Republicans and nearly universally known.
Her backing could help insulate Mr Trump against charges that he’s not a true believer in the cause due to his support for liberal political issues and candidates in the past.
At the very least, she could add even more crowd-drawing power to a Trump campaign that already fills entire sports arenas.
So Palin backs Trump. But why, in a country which has achieved so much, do blatant ignorance and stupidity have so much political capital?
— Patrick Harvie (@patrickharvie) January 19, 2016
Does the Palin endorsement matter? In one narrow but significant way it does: effectively rebuts argument Trump is not a conservative.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) January 19, 2016
Regardless of your opinion of her, palin endorsing @realDonaldTrump at this moment against Cruz is a big help to trump. hurts Cruz badly.
— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 19, 2016
Donald #Trump as Prez – Sarah #Palin as his Secretary of State.
Would be a hell of a 6 weeks – until they accidentally blow up Belgium.
— Joe O'Shea (@josefoshea) January 19, 2016
There go any plans Tina Fey had for Saturday night. https://t.co/VhUfpUKeY3
— Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) January 19, 2016
Sarah #Palin endorses #Trump. It's official: Life no longer imitates art. Life imitates satire.
— Brett Arends (@BrettArends) January 19, 2016
If Trump wins the nomination, footage of him with Palin today will make a lot of Democratic attack ads. https://t.co/qogFecyPob
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 19, 2016
Here Is a Video of Sarah Palin Interviewing Donald Trump. It Is Bonkers. https://t.co/LzNOwIFoUX
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) January 19, 2016
TRUMP: "I quit reality TV for politics."
PALIN: "I quit politics for reality TV."
BOTH: "Together, we'll never quit fighting for you."
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 19, 2016
The party decides https://t.co/eITEaqj8ql
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) January 19, 2016
"A mockery of conservatism": Even right-wingers are making fun of Sarah Palin's potential Trump endorsement https://t.co/q1DE8t7NOO
— Salon.com (@Salon) January 19, 2016
Stalled out in the polls, a desperate Donald Trump stoops to accepting $arah Palin’s endorsement https://t.co/t8W7D1yg0w #PaidHer
— Ivan Roberson (@Ivanroberson) January 19, 2016
Trump, Coulter, Cruz, Palin. This primary is like the Mt. Rushmore of bad GOP karma.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 19, 2016
Cruz campaign warns that a potential endorsement of Trump will hurt Sarah Palin, not Ted Cruz: https://t.co/PTzYpzeTW2 by @jeff_poor
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 19, 2016
Cruz spokesman: I’d be “deeply disappointed” if Sarah Palin endorses a progressive like Trump https://t.co/J2Ypkizv0N
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) January 19, 2016
OTOH the DNC took the news of a possible Trump-Palin rally a little better pic.twitter.com/Oo7WpmGFDP
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) January 19, 2016
Trump & Palin have pretty similar policy positions:
https://t.co/ON1mp20aVL
https://t.co/j69EbQGzFT pic.twitter.com/SzTacdLhZl
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 19, 2016
Gonna watch the Trump/Palin rally with the largest bottle of bourbon I can find.
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 19, 2016
If Palin endorses Trump, then she will have proved that every bad thing said about her political career and motivations was true.
— John Scotus (@John_Scotus) January 19, 2016
With Palin's endorsement of Trump, the Tea Party movement has truly come to an end. Shot in the head with its own gun, no less.
— Jeff Blehar/AoSHQDD (@EsotericCD) January 19, 2016
To follow more blog reaction GO HERE
UPDATE:
Leon Wolf on the conservative website Red State:
Well, this was more or less expected news. The final insult contained in this ridiculous charade is that the Trump campaign did not even release the news to one of the news organizations like Breitbart who have knelt before them in fawning servitude since day one, but instead leaked it to… the New York Times.
The Palins are just such ridiculous people. Today’s crapshow really showcased the high-tension neurosis that defines everything they are nowadays. Ted Cruz’s campaign manager released a fairly innocuous statement saying that if Palin endorsed Trump, he thought it might hurt Palin’s image. Nothing personally derogatory about Palin at all, and in fact Cruz himself tweeted earlier today that even if Palin endorsed Trump, he would remain a fan of hers.
So Sarah sends out her daughter’s not-very-talented ghostwriter to produce this utterly classless attack on Cruz that basically makes a huge deal out of the fact that Ted Cruz has said complimentary things about her in the past, and concludes with “no one likes you.”
Keep in mind that nothing Cruz said was even 10% as insulting as Trump knocking McCain for choosing her over Romney as VP in 2008.
The liberal blog Think Progress:
Sarah Palin is expected to endorse Donald Trump for president today, a move that could provide a needed boost for Trump as he heads into the competitive Iowa caucuses.
Does the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate want anything in return? Most likely, yes — Palin, who popularized the term “drill, baby, drill,” has said she’d like to be Trump’s Secretary of Energy. And Trump has said he’d be willing to give Palin a position in his cabinet, should he be elected president.
“I’d love that,” Trump said back in July during an interview with Mama Grizzly Radio, a station which offers only news about Sarah Palin. “Because she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person.”
Shortly afterward, Palin was asked on CNN what position she would like to have in Trump’s administration. Without missing a beat, Palin said she’d want to head the Department of Energy — but only so she could eventually get rid of it.
Doug Mataconis:
Given the high profile nature of the endorsement announcement — it is scheduled to start at 6pm Eastern just in time for the national broadcast network news shows and the beginning of prime time coverage on cable on the East Coast and during afternoon drive on the West Coast — it’s clear that the Trump campaign believes that Palin’s endorsement will help Trump in some significant sense. At least in Iowa, it is obviously directed toward the conservative and evangelical voters who dominate the Republican electorate in that state and to conservatives in states such as South Carolina. Whether it will actually help Trump in either state, or in the race for the Republican nomination as a whole, is hard to say. The days when Sarah Palin was viewed wildly positively by Republicans in general and conservatives in particular are long gone, and while there remains a contingent of reflexively loyal pro-Palin sycophants the mention of her name on the right today is just as likely to elicit sighs, eyerolls, and jokes as it is to elicit the kind of effusive worship she received when she was John McCain’s running mate or in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 elections and the rise of the Tea Party that she was so closely associated with. For the most part, this is due to the fact that Palin has poisoned the well with her fellow Republicans in recent years to the point where even many of her most ardent supporters in the past consider her to be largely irrelevant to the future of the GOP.
….Given this, it should be hardly surprising that Palin is not only endorsing Trump but will, according to early reports, campaign for him across highway in these closing two weeks before the Iowa Caucuses. In more ways than one the absurdity that is the Donald Trump campaign is merely the logical conclusion of the movement that surrounded Palin in the wake of her selection of John McCain’s running mate. It is a movement that lacks substance, that appeals to made up facts and a vision of an America that never really existed, it exploits the resentments of the populist anti-intellectual Tea Party movement against whatever “other” happens to be in the news at this time, and it is immune from refutation because it refuses to accept either logic or easily established facts as the basis for discussion. In other words, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump are perfect for each other, and the Republican Party is stuck with them.
Hot Air’s Allahpundit:Jim Geraghty wrote this morning that the tea-party era began on Tax Day 2009, the day conservatives protested in cities across the country, but plenty of Palin fans will tell you that it actually began eight months earlier, when Palin flew into Dayton to accept John McCain’s offer to be his VP. That wasn’t a tea-party campaign by any stretch — it was pro-TARP, pro-amnesty, pro-cap-and-trade, and all McCain — but it made Palin a national figure. And she was, unquestionably, the biggest Republican name associated with the tea party for years afterward. Cruz has a passionate cheering section among grassroots conservatives but he’s never been beloved the way Palin was. She was “one of us.” The nerd from Harvard and Princeton never will be, no matter how many “Duck Dynasty” ads he puts out. Only Trump has built a cult of personality on the right during the Obama era as passionate as the one Palin enjoyed from 2009 through 2012. In that sense, today’s endorsement is appropriate. Cruz is the better conservative. Trump is the better populist. Palin’s made her choice.
Laura Clawson on the liberal blog Daily Kos:
Your 2008 nightmare endorses your 2016 nightmare. Comedians everywhere cheer at the reams of material they’ve been handed. Ted Cruz has a sad. And this is American politics today:
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.