IDK about anyone else, but I’m not prepared for the coronation yet, and I dare say, neither is Gov. Palin. She’s got potential, and her ability on the stump is phenomenal, but at this point, that is what she is: potential.

I’d rather she focus on the issues in Alaska. If she can balance the budget this upcoming year and/or make nice with her fellow Republicans to do so, she’s going to be on my shortlist for candidates to support. If, OTOH, she fails at dealing with the issues in AK, I’ll have to call Huckabee on her.

Regardless, it’s a mute point if we don’t get our act together in infrastructure, organization, and restoring principles in time for 2010, and I’d rather work on building up a Party apparatus that is useful in finding and getting elected good candidates than putting all my hopes on Mrs. Palin.

Actually, I doubt she knew what she was claiming or even made the claims herself on her travel. She’s kept a bunch of congenital ‘crats who represent just about everything wrong with government, and I’m sure somebody filled her travel authorization out for her, she trusted them and signed it - bad mistake. I know I never filled out my own, but I went to the trouble to know the rules and check what the Tech had done.

I will rememebr in future. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,…

You very conveniently left out the fact that Palin has spent a cool million dollars LESS in expenses than either Murkowski or Knowles did at this point in their terms.

Big picture, she has spent less money than the previous two Governors, on “office expenses”.

I hate to say it, but only really deranged folks would worry about the money she has spent.

I know Alaska has some very strange rules, and some odd folks, but even a loon can see she has been better and a heck of a lot more frugal on spending than the last two Governors.

Until the Republican party all gets a copy of Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals” and starts putting it to good use, this kinda thing will happen.

I’ve written about this a lot, and been chastised fro chastising the party, but this is the Republican party’s weak link. They never EVER go to war, I mean real war to protect one of their own.

Of course now, we all have a bunch of bit players and RINOs who think they can be POTUS, so they aren’t about to come to Palin’s aid.

If she ware a democrat, and this was being done to her by the mean old Republicans, every single democrat on earth would declare thermonuclear war on the Republicans.

There would be charges of racism (her kids are part Indian) sexism, and so on. You have all of them flying to Alaska to have photo ops with her, and the President would personally invite her to whatever function was in question.

And of course, the media would be hammering the GOP for it’s nastiness.

But Republican’s NEVER come to aid of a fellow Republican. All of them are too busy trying to be on top.

I agree with Warrior.

Palin IS the new face of the party. The faster everyone realizes this, and jumps on board for the real fight, the better off we are!

The travel issues here with Gov. Palin are that she was fast and loose with family travel at State expense and the per diem for living at home and working in Anchorage rather than Juneau. Then, the trip back east in the last week of the Legislative session raised a lot of eyebrows and some things happened that might not have happened or would have happened differently had she been here.

For those of you who live in states the size of postage stamps and where you can drive to three states in a couple of hours, it might not make sense that people here pay attention to a public official’s travel and especaially State paid travel. I have two kids in Seattle, the closest point in the Lower 48 for me. If one of them got sick or hurt and I needed to catch the next plane to SEA, I’d be $887 poorer for a coach ticket. From Anchorage, an hour further away, it would be $944 today. By way of comparison, I could fly from LAX to NYC today for about $550.

I know this sounds insane, but that’s the state of Alaska politics ever since this governor agreed to be a candidate for vice president. What other governors have had “ethics” complaints filed against them simply for sepaking a pro-life dinner or helping out an organization which provides support to families of special needs kids. To file that particular complaint, the anti-Palin axis found a Palin-hatin’ woman who has a special needs child herself and had her submit the complaint.

These animals are rabid.

- JP

And yet these very same critics were huge backers of Obama who did absolutely nothing but run for president after being elected to the senate.

Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to describe their behavior. Insane, mad and obsessed come a little closer.

The Dems and their leftist media syncophants are frightened to death of her. And that’s one big plus right there. Remember, THEY want the first woman President to be a Dem and will become reckless in opposing Sara P. if she runs, I believe.

Another plus she brings to the front is that indeed, she has that Everyman (or in her case, Everywoman) sensibility that Reagan had. She speaks the language of the hockey mom. She is not afraid of the leftist media or in awe of them. That’s why they attack her with such gusto.

Some talking head on one of the morning shows this AM said that Obama was such a good candidate and that’s what matters. And that’s exactly right. As much as I respect John McCain’s service to our country, he was an AWFUL candidate, with that mechanical grin and the robot-like repetition of, “My Friends.” It’s just as well, though, I don’t think any Repub short of a reincarnation of Reagan could have won against Obama.

As far as political tactics, let’s take a page out of the Dems playbook. They spotted and groomed Obama from the beginning. He has no record to attack, he is calm and well-spoken (but not eloquent,) he is non-threatening and even, in the immortal words of Joe “The Mouth” Biden, “clean.”

And to top it all off, Sara Palin is a true conservative. She will not succumb to the Siren song of flattery by the NYT as I predicted Specter would on this very website years ago. She will not sit on the veto pen and let reckless spending pass endlessly by. She will not seek the bi-partisan middle nor “reach out” to the other side of the aisle. In short — she has the makings of another “Iron Lady.” And that scares the Dems to death.

Palin seems to have it all in front of her. If she decides to run in 2012 and brings a strong message and campaign team, everyone will listen and she will likely suck up all the media oxygen. What Pol wouldn’t want to be in her position?