It's Her Party Now

It's Her Party Now
By Mark Halperin
Copyright by Times Magazine
Monday, Apr. 12, 2010
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1977121,00.html


Sarah Palin doesn't really do compromise. Defiance is more her style. So when other Republicans began to go soft on their promises to "repeal and replace" Barack Obama's landmark health care reform, the former Alaska governor went reliably rogue. Wearing a trim black leather jacket and pencil skirt, Palin appeared at a rally for John McCain in Arizona and urged the GOP faithful not to quail now. "I see Fidel Castro likes Obamacare, and we don't," she taunted. "Doesn't that tell you something?"

Palin is consolidating her position as the most powerful person in the Republican party. She signed a deal reportedly worth millions to be featured in an eight-episode series about Alaska on TLC, and she'll add that gig to her richly compensated duties at Fox News, where she is an occasional political pundit. She has another book on the way, following the best seller Going Rogue, and numerous private speaking engagements. She remains hotly in demand.

At the same time, she is maneuvering for position as the race for 2012 warms up. Palin is making time to help a roster of Republican candidates between now and November. She laughs off the notion that rough language might incite further acts of aggression against Democrats; instead, she's put crosshair markings on her Facebook page to identify lawmakers she has targeted for defeat in the fall election. Quippy and tart, she mocks the "lamestream media" for distracting voters by distorting GOP positions. And by carefully controlling her own visibility, she has become more irresistible as cable-news and viral content.

Stumping in the Southwest over the weekend, Palin proved that she is one heck of a Sun Belt candidate. Within the conservative movement, she still has unmatched appeal. Joining McCain on the trail for the first time since the end of their unsuccessful 2008 campaign, Palin delivered the goods for the 73-year-old Senator, who is struggling to win his party's nomination for a fifth term. She earnestly and at times poignantly argued that McCain is a true Tea Party conservative. She said the movement is short on battle-tested, experienced veterans in Congress to take the fight to the Democrats alongside younger firebrands like Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown and Palin herself. "We need new blood," she said, "but we also need heroes and statesmen."

The joint appearance was nostalgic and at times a little awkward. Palin gratefully credits McCain for her newfound fame, wealth and power. McCain is fascinated by Palin's ability to draw a crowd and make news; he also feels a sense of responsibility for the intense scrutiny and radical life changes that have befallen Palin and her family. Thousands of people came to the Pima County Fairgrounds, many of them apparently there to see Palin rather than the actual candidate--something Cindy McCain highlighted in her brief remarks, to nervous laughter. Notably, all the cable news networks (Fox News included) cut away from live coverage once Palin had concluded her remarks and McCain began his.

Later, in Phoenix, Palin headlined a McCain fundraiser at the Biltmore hotel, where she once clashed with his aides about whether she would be allowed to deliver her own concession speech on the final night of the 2008 campaign. (In the end, she wasn't.) Most of the campaign advisers who viewed Palin as untrustworthy and erratic have left McCain's orbit, and his current aides were delighted to apply her star power to their troubled cause. With Palin in the state, they collected e-mail addresses for follow-up contact, raised several hundred thousand dollars and attracted the kind of crowds and media coverage that McCain can no longer bring in on his own. And the Senator continued his conversion from a maverick unafraid to compromise with Democrats to a Republican determined to thwart Obama's agenda, starting with overturning the new health care law. "It's going to be repealed and replaced, and it's going to be done soon," McCain thundered. "It will not stand."

Palin then traveled some 250 miles northwest to join the Tea Party assault on Harry Reid in his ink-dot hometown of Searchlight, Nev. (pop. 738). Despite fears of unrest and a crowd of several thousand angry activists, the Searchlight event turned out to be a tame affair, mostly vague speeches about freedom and the evils of Washington. But the rhetoric was at times deviant and downright ugly: placards and T-shirts reading "Send Obuma [sic] back to Kenya" and "Pelosi is the White House's new Monica" were visible during Palin's brief speech, and she made no effort to censure their owners. "We're not going to sit down and shut up," she told the cheering crowd. "Thank you for standing up." The events in Arizona and Nevada failed to mask the widening splits in Palin's party about tactics and direction. One sign in Searchlight read: "No more RINOs [Republicans in name only]--Retire McCain." Another said: "Reid-McCain: Two sides of the same damn coin. Vote them out."

Meanwhile, Reid, whose poll numbers suggest his time in the Senate could be ending soon, was hardly cowed by the loathers swamping his hometown. Palin had no sooner left Searchlight than he appeared at a fundraiser in Las Vegas featuring Al Gore as the keynote speaker. The former Veep, who ran for President twice, takes Palin seriously. From the day McCain plucked her from obscurity, Gore has seen her as a potent, raw political talent who should not be underestimated. He didn't mention Palin by name in his remarks at the Reid event, but he did condemn Republicans who rail "against everything without any sensible policy prescription" alternatives.

Democrats know keeping control of Congress in November will be a challenge, but they believe that the passage of health care reform gives them a chance to hold their losses to a minimum. Palin doesn't see it that way. "We're taking our country back, and we're starting right here in Nevada," she told the Searchlight crowd, many of whom chanted for her to run for President. For Palin, health care's passage was not the end of a long battle but the start of an entirely new war. And she sounds more than happy to lead it.