The Tea Parties mattered

Last night my husband tried to show me what teabagging was, let’s get back to family stuff like Sara..

Since the conclusion of the presidential election, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has largely avoided the political fundraising circuit. Nevertheless, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee has emerged as an almost unparalleled fundraising force, with both foes and fans minting money off the mere mention of her name.

The candidates and causes that have climbed aboard the Palin gravy train include, but aren’t limited to, abortion rights foes and supporters, environmental groups, and political committees supporting both Republican and Democratic candidates. It’s a testament not only to her star power, but to the strong feelings she generates among partisans.

For the most part, Palin herself is an unwitting participant in the burgeoning business.

“The only authorized thing out there at this point is SarahPAC. And the rest are just using her name and brand to draw attention and roll in the dollars,” said Meg Stapleton, a spokeswoman for SarahPAC, the committee Palin set up in January to raise money for her political staff, travels and contributions to like-minded candidates.

Aside from an early e-mailed solicitation from the group and a Thursday anti-abortion banquet in Indiana that the PAC will pay for Palin to attend, neither the governor nor her PAC have engaged in much in fundraising this year, due to her attempts to focus on Alaska’s legislative session.

But that hasn’t stopped others from seeking to fill their own coffers by pillorying her in direct mail, piggybacking on or her stances and symbolism, hinting she might appear at their fundraisers and sometimes even falsely implying contributions will go directly to Palin.

With some groups, it’s not entirely clear what the overarching goal is, other than to tap into the Palin cash pipeline.

“Sarah Palin’s Defense Fund,” for instance, was the name of one curious entity until a sternly-worded letter from a Palin lawyer instructed the site’s proprietor to “remove all references to Governor Sarah Palin and/or her likeness from your site pending written approval.” That prompted the proprietor to replace that fund with another called “Sarah’s War Chest” which seeks contributions “to encourage her to run in the upcoming elections.”

Last month, a different group called Americans in Contact PAC launched a high-tech, multi-state campaign seeking contributions to help re-elect Palin as Alaska governor in 2010, even though its own direct mail included puzzling fine print serving notice that all contributions “are only used in Federal elections.”

Stapleton said that Palin’s virtual absence from the fundraising scene has created a vacuum that others have used to their benefit. But she asserted that continued intense interest in the Alaska governor will enable her to be a successful fundraiser when she does hit the rubber chicken circuit, regardless of how many groups have tapped her name to raise money.

“If we find that other people have had a chance at the dollars first, that’s O.K.,” she said. “We’re not really concerned about diluting any message. It’s just we’re concerned about people thinking the dollars are going for her or her vision or her philosophy or values when it may just be going for a big screen TV.”

Stapleton singled out an Americans in Contact PAC direct mailer that arrived at the Palin residence in Wasilla, Alaska.

“[Palin’s husband] Todd brought it to my house and said ‘you guys shouldn’t be doing this,’” Stapleton recalled. “And I said ‘Todd, that’s not from us.’ But it was quite tricky. And, gosh, I was fooled reading through it.”

That certainly wasn’t the intent of the mailer, said Gabriel S. Joseph, III, the treasurer of Americans in Contact, which on its website lists its mission as an effort “to identify social and fiscal conservatives throughout America and engage them at the grassroots level in the political process of elections and legislation at all levels of government.”

“This is just an independent, altruistic, committed effort to do our part to help Sarah Palin get reelected governor of Alaska. Period. End of line,” Joseph said, explaining that the PAC is paying a polling, data-mining and fundraising firm of which he is the president, ccAdvertising, to prospect for likely donors by making so-called “artificial intelligence” telephone calls to a database of “13 million identified conservatives from previous efforts.”

Between September and the end of last year – the period covered by the PAC’s only Federal Election Commission filings – Americans in Contact raised $73,000, contributed $1,750 to candidates and paid $28,000 to ccAdvertising for “PAC surveys” and phone and administrative services.

Joseph wouldn’t say how the PAC would spend the money raised from its Palin appeal (“Why would I want the enemy to know to know what’s going on?” he said). Instead, he explained that, generally speaking, “there is money spent in raising the money. But there is also money spent in accumulating the data of supporters for her that can then be generated and used in get out the vote efforts and otherwise.”

More importantly, he said the data can be used “to identify more donors and more supporters potentially to build an army of supporters for Sarah Palin. Of Sarah Palin, not for Sarah Palin. Of Sarah Palin.”

Other conservative groups see Palin’s drawing power and pine for her to headline their fundraisers, with some reticent to take “no” for an answer.

“I can’t tell how many invitations I’ve seen with ‘Gov. Palin’ in 25-point font and ‘invited’ in 1-point font,” said Stapleton of SarahPAC.

The Palin pitch is proving irresistible for both sides of the abortion debate. The Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports female politicians who oppose abortion rights, began seeing its paid membership spike soon after Republican presidential nominee John McCain tapped Palin – a vigorous abortion rights opponent – to be his running mate, said its political director Joy Yearout.

“It’s invigorated us in ways that we could never have anticipated,” she said.

The group used Palin in fundraising emails during the campaign, and it’s continued raising money through a passive appeal on a free social networking site it established called “Team Sarah,” that boasts 65,000 members, said Yearout.

Palin appears to be just as effective for groups supporting abortion rights.

An anonymous viral e-mail asking abortion rights supporters to contribute to Planned Parenthood “in Sarah Palin’s name” generated more than $1 million in contributions in the month after the Republican convention, according to spokesman Tait Sye.

And NARAL Pro-Choice America used direct mail and email solicitations targeting Palin to boost its fundraising “significantly” in 2008, said spokesman Ted Miller.

“Although she has taken a somewhat lower profile now, if she chooses to reemerge and take on a more public profile in either attacking President Obama or pushing anti-choice policies, our members will respond in kind,” Miller said.

Another group that saw its fundraising soar by opposing Palin was the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, which raised more than $1 million to air an ad in swing states blasting Palin for supporting aerial wolf hunting.

The ad, which was reshot after the election to feature Ashley Judd, continues to boost the group’s membership and fundraising, said fund president Rodger Schlickeisen.

“In this age, when a lot of the donors out there look at this administration and this Congress and incorrectly conclude that [on] environment and conservation [issues], their worries are over, it is very beneficial to us to be able to point to Alaska and Palin,” he said.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee apparently agrees since it sent out a pair of fundraising appeals blasting Palin last month after the Republican House and Senate campaign committees prematurely announced that Palin would be headlining their June fundraiser.

“They have her. We have you,” read an emailed DCCC solicitation with Palin’s picture.

Another DCCC plea for cash, this one from Democratic consultant and commentator James Carville, suggested Palin should “get back on that bridge to nowhere.”

It hardly mattered that Palin ended up backing out of the GOP dinner, said Christian Heinze, whose blog “GOP 12” obsessively tracks every mention, movement and statement of prospective 2012 Republican presidential candidates.

“She’s becoming the new Rush Limbaugh,” Heinze said. “I get emails from people all the time saying ‘when is Sarah Palin going to go away?’ But neither side wants her to go away. She’s benefitting both of them. They seem to be getting pretty equitable bang for the buck off of her.”

***********PALIN-MCCAIN 2012**************

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The New York Times has a really good write up on our nest president today, why not the AJC

JUNEAU, Alaska — Before Tina Fey and “Drill, baby, drill,” there was mud season here in the Alaskan capital. This soggy, socked-in spring has been no exception, but it sure has been different in other ways. For Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican meteor, getting back to governing has not been easy.

As the legislative session draws to an end this weekend, Ms. Palin is pushing no major bills, and neither are state lawmakers. Many pivotal alliances between the governor and minority Democrats are obsolete, undone by mutual bitterness from the election. The rush of oil revenues that helped Ms. Palin press for big-ticket projects in the past has been replaced by a budget deficit that will require taking at least $1 billion out of state savings.

And then there is the pervasive sense among many lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, that a new political reality has overtaken this remote government seat.

“The source of the greatest tension this year between the Legislature and the executive has been certainly the appearance that the executive is prioritizing her national image, her national brand, over the day-to-day operations of state government and the interests of the State of Alaska,” said Mike Hawker, the Republican co-chairman of the House Finance Committee.

Ms. Palin, Senator John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate last fall, remains a Republican star across the country and in Alaska. But her detractors at the Capitol complain that she has been distracted from state business both by continued efforts to position herself nationally and by the tabloid-tilted aspects of her new prominence.

Recently, she has sparred publicly with Levi Johnston, the 19-year-old father of her grandson, who broke up with Ms. Palin’s daughter Bristol. On Thursday, while lawmakers hone the state budget, the governor is to speak at an anti-abortion group’s fund-raising dinner in Indiana. The next morning, she addresses a breakfast for a nonprofit for families like her own who have a child with Down syndrome.

Ms. Palin and her aides insist she is as engaged with state businesses as ever. “We have a very good working relationship, as far as we know, with lawmakers,” Ms. Palin said last week in her office, where she met with reporters. “Our door is always open.”

Democratic lawmakers had been crucial in the past to the governor’s efforts to raise oil taxes and approve legislation promoting a natural gas pipeline, her signature achievements, yet many say Ms. Palin has abandoned those relationships, that she has become more polarizing rather than working to broaden her appeal. In turn, some Democrats have missed no opportunity to snipe back.

Twice the governor has rejected Democrats’ choice to fill a vacant State Senate seat in heavily Democratic Juneau; they have responded by rejecting the three Democrats she has nominated. This week, the state Democratic Party held a news conference to criticize Ms. Palin’s trip to Indiana, prompting a sharp retort from the governor’s office insisting that she has spent far more time in Juneau than previous governors had.

The biggest policy fight has been over how much federal stimulus money the state should accept (the governor initially held a news conference to say she would accept only 55 percent of the $930 million available; she soon signaled her willingness to accept more, though not enough for lawmakers). The State Senate, often her foil, took matters to a new level this year by stripping some of the governor’s priority projects from its proposed budget, including some in support of the natural gas pipeline. The Senate has yet to go along with a bill backed by Ms. Palin that would require parental notification and consent before young women under 17 can have abortions.

The governor recently nominated Wayne Anthony Ross, a board member of the National Rifle Association, to be Alaska’s attorney general. Mr. Ross, who is expected to be confirmed, has told lawmakers that he opposes many federal efforts in Alaska like increasing protections for polar bears and beluga whales and limiting resource development. Years ago, he described gay men and lesbians as “degenerates.”

As a private lawyer, Mr. Ross said, he lived his initials. “My license plate says, ‘WAR,’ ” Mr. Ross said in an interview after a recent confirmation hearing. “And my wife’s license plate says, ‘MRS WAR.’ ”

Yet even Mr. Ross offered a mild critique of the governor. In the hearing, he said he had urged her “to open better communication between the Legislature and her office.” He said he thought Ms. Palin risked appearing that she had been cowed by critics — “treed by Chihuahuas,” as he put it — and that “she needs to smile more.”

Meanwhile, the governor has opened a political action committee, SarahPAC, and there is no shortage of observers tracking how she navigates these first months after the McCain-Palin campaign. Will she run for re-election in 2010, for president in 2012?

“Who is coaching her through this crucial period?” asked Hollis French, a Democratic state senator from Anchorage and a former ally of the governor. “It’s like the opportunity of a lifetime, right?”

Meghan Stapleton, who worked for the governor long before the 2008 campaign and now is a spokeswoman for SarahPAC, said Mrs. Palin “doesn’t have any advisers outside of the state.” Ms. Palin had been scheduled as the keynote speaker for the Republican Party’s major Congressional fund-raiser in June, but after what Ms. Stapleton said was a misunderstanding over scheduling, that event is now to be headlined by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

“There are critics out there who say she’s not engaged in the national ambitions that they have for her,” Ms. Stapleton said. “The fact that she has people criticizing that she’s not doing it the way D.C. insiders would do it is a compliment to her.”

The governor plans to open a legal defense fund to help pay for more than $500,000 in legal debt, principally from what became known as Troopergate, a legislative inquiry that found she had abused her power in the pressuring a former state public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper, her former brother-in-law.

All of which has made Ms. Palin alternately warm and testy in her dealings around the Capitol. In the meeting with reporters in her office last week, she expressed little distress over lawmakers’ revisions to legislation she favored. She also said she prays for “the revelation of truth” to combat what she says are persistent lies about her and her family.

At one point, someone complimented her hand-painted clogs. “Cute shoes,” the person said. Ms. Palin responded, alluding to a recent dust-up over being seen wearing the logo of her husband’s snow machine sponsor: “I may not be able to tell you who paints them or I may be charged with an ethics violation or something.”

***********PALIN-MCCAIN 2012**************

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Wooten’s talent with words: “One protester sat before the rally began on a brick wall hand-lettering a protest sign with an ink pen.”

Octomom Monopoly: The Octomom has filed a patent to protect her name as a trademark. 008: license to fertile. The lust of antitrust. (sorry)

A tree was found growing in a man’s lung. How much weed to you gotta smoke for THAT to happen?

Vick wants a reality show. Prison wasn’t enough reality? Isn’t football a reality show?

Atlanta Metro Malls are going bankrupt at taxpayer’s expense. Mallrats and free government cheese……New Mall Contractors are going to have to build a better rat trap.

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I want to see Rush Limbaugh’s tax return

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The American International Group is close to a deal to sell its U.S.
auto insurance business to Swiss insurer Zurich Financial Services for
between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to press reports.

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A group including the private equity firm Black Oak Partners said it
approached General Motors about buying the assets of its Saturn brand
and distribution network.

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A Boston law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit against a hedge fund
controlled by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance for placing all of
the fund’s assets with Bernard L. Madoff, who is facing life in prison
for conducting a massive fraud,

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The federal government is widening its investigation of offshore tax
evasion to include services sold by the First Data Corporation, a large
processor of credit card transactions.

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U.S. energy trader SemGroup spiraled into bankruptcy last year after
its top executives lied about its liquidity problems and mismanaged a
speculative trading strategy

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If the sentiment of this crowd was to be gauged correctly, simplification as framed by this President would be to include just one question and one directive on the 1040s…

Wow. and I thought my of the teabagging crowd was low! Hard to top Jim’s lack of regard for their intelligence.

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A tree grows in Brooklyn. A tree grows in a man’s lung!

A tree clobbered my house during the storms last week. I have Allstate Homeowners Insurance. I will report how smoothly the claims process goes.

The man with a tree in his lungs has filed a claim with his own insurance company. Apparently the storms knocked over that same tree in his lungs and clobbered his spleen. Now that’s a strong storm!

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Not at all, DB, it was a good joke! I laughed out loud, slapped my knee, rolled on the floor, AND had milk coming out of my nose! (and it cured my hiccups)

Comedians 2009: We cure hiccups.

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Palin and McCain………The joke has begun !

I guess McCain would be the VP because she has traveled out of the country, and not just saw a foreign country from the US coast ? I am really intrigued at all her experience ?

I guess since her dad ran for president she must have some type of experience besides complaining about her love life, while her daddy ran for office ?

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I was at the Chicago Tea Party yesterday and the only disruptive peons that I noticed were the two ACCORN morons who were quickly laughed at. One of them left crying with his tail tucked between his skinny pale legs. The other was a bitchy CNN woman who made headlines on all the networks for her stupidity and bias towards a news channel that didn’t even organize the event.

CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC have terrible ratings they are desperate to tear down the ONE news channel that beats them day in and day out.

Even when liberals are in charge of the country their lives still suck balls! It must truly suck to be a poor uneducated liberal in this country.

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ChurchHill’s MOM and Big Bucks GOP:

It seems that EVERY SINGLE DAY you seem to have the time to IMMEDIATELY change the subject of Jim’s topic–and cut/paste lengthy and distracting information and blather off of pro-Obama web sites and blogs.

My bet is: You are operatives of Obama’s election machine intended to subterfuge any intelligent and exchange of conservative topics.

To all the other readers of Jim’s blog—just skip the tripe from these idiots. They should be aware they are wasting their time–not ours–and making a joke of themselves and Obama’s meager attempts to take conservatives off-topic.

If you two want to cut/paste the Old Testament (or Koran) every day, or cut/paste headlines in the Huffington Post—why not set up your own blog—because you’ve already lost any credibility or worthiness on this blog.

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What’s funny is Anderson Cooper said that its hard to talk when you’re teabagging.

Yeah, that butt pirate should know all about tea bagging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64Ed5iLu4M

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Chicago Commie pretends to have insight, and then misses the fact that the McCain everyone is talking about is the daughter McCain. I’d suggest the WIndy City Comrade try to keep up, but from teaching Special Ed classes one learns to not ask the impossible of the severely handicapped.

Everyone knows that St John of Hanoi died in October and was replaced by an animatronic substitute. Kind of like Wooten.

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Hey CommunistAJC…….maybe you have not read the prior post………Churchhill’s MOM is talking about McCain’s daughter as the VP candidate……seems funny enough.

I am assuming she is stating the daughter as VP, with Palin as President.

Knowing the Palin has left the US just once in her life, and has foreign experience because she once saw Russia from the banks of Alaska, I figure Ms McCain would have the Internation knowledge to be VP.

Makes for a Silly Ticket……… so what is your beef today…..?

By the way please explain what it means to be Christian if you would….seems a Christian like Jesus would practice being one 7 days a week, and he would not get involved in Name calling.

Thank you.

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NOTICE THAT THE GOP HICKS HERE DONT USE SUBSTANCE FOR A SMART CONVERSATION,THEY SAY FORREST GUMP LINES,OR THEY SAY YOU ARE A TERRORIST.

BUT NEVER DO THEY TALK ABOUT WHY WE ARE 50TH IN THE NATION IN EDUCATION
50TH
50TH
50TH
LAST IN EDUCATION LAST IN COMMON SENSE
GEORGIA DUMB WHITES ARE JUST THAT DUMB!
YOUR EDUCATION SPEAKS FOR ITSELF WHICH WHEN YOU SPEAK IT SHOWS YOUR DUMBNESS

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DEMOCRAP PARTY YOU COWARD THE ONLY THING YOU POINT OUT IS SPELLING NOT THE FACTS OR THE TRUTH WHICH I TYPE.

REMEMBER YOU DIDNT SAY I WAS WRONG ONLY MY SPELLING WHICH SHOWS THAT A GOP FOOL CANT COME WITH FACTS.

BUSH BOOTLICKER SUCKER I SPELLED THIS RIGHT.

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@Charles

Are the “tea-baggers” one of those secret organizations that you support to help blacks who are not helping themselves?

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Way to go, Jim Wooten! Keep the Tea Party going. Dontcha just love independent Americans who can’t stand having the “wool pulled over their eyes”?? Debt loading Democrats in Washington that is.

I’ll take a little lemon in my tea ,thank you, and keep the teapot warm.

By the way, would someone please SANDBAG the computer of Churchill’s Mom? Mrs. C-Mom is overdoing her work at DNC.

Chris Broe, a tall tree fell toward my house but was blocked by a bigger tree. No home damage. Good big tree! My son was not as fortunate and had a tall pine that fell from next door on his home. Not so much roof damage but no power for two days before they could put in a new transformer and lines. A huge tangle of house, tree and wires. Hope you got your cleared. My tree has been removed.

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sd
April 16th, 2009
10:19 am,

The point is not that we are paying taxes, it what these taxes are going towards, like Obama’s $410 billion in earmarks and all his other pet projects. Get it?

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The propaganda wing of the Republican Party, oh I mean Fox News and their stupid Hannity, Limbaugh, Palin tea party, what a joke, just a much of immoral traders.

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Peadawg, I get it. I am not happy about deficit spending either. But where was your outrage when Bush was engaging in this same behavior. At least Obama has stated that it is his intention to end the preactice of deficit spending during his term.

It was the thought of this administration, the prior, and most economists, that failure to spend at these levels would have led to further collapse of the economy.

I agree that we should stop spending so much and I for one and very happy that we will stop wasting money in Iraq within the next two years.

I just find it hypocritical that the outrage at deficit spending was never there when it was a republican doing it.

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