It’s Official: Sarah Palin Not Speaking At Republican Convention
In announcement that will surprise some, Sarah Palin confirmed in a statement last night that she will not be speaking at the Republican National Convention, which begins two weeks from today:
2008 GOP vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced Sunday she would not speak at this year’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.
In a statement published on the blog of Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren, Palin said this year would be a “good opportunity for other voices to speak at the convention and I’m excited to hear them.”
Palin expressed her backing for the GOP ticket and said she would continue to focus her efforts on helping the party remove President Obama from office and control both chambers of Congress.
“As I’ve repeatedly said, I support Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in their efforts to replace President Obama at the ballot box, and I intend to focus on grassroots efforts to rally Independents and the GOP base to elect Senate and House members so a wise Congress is ready to work with our new President to get our country back on the right path,” she said.
“This is imperative. As President Clinton said in 2008 while candidate Obama and lapdogs in the media were thrashing his wife’s record and reputation, this is ‘…the biggest fairy tale.’ For the sake of America’s solvency and sovereignty we must close this nonsensical book in November,” she added.
It’s not clear if this was a result of a decision by the Romney campaign and/or the RNC to keep Palin off the dais in Tampa, or if Palin herself decided not to attend. In support of the first possibility, there some hints a few weeks ago that various people inside the party were reluctant to let her overshadow the campaign. At the same time, though, it’s no big secret that Palin has not exactly been an enthusiastic Romney supporter and, until the statement she released after Paul Ryan was named as his running mate, had not issued anything that could even remotely be called an endorsement of the campaign. In either case, it will be interesting to see how her hardcore supporters, and yes they still exist, will view this and, if they see it as a snub, whether that will have an impact on their support for the Romney/Ryan ticket.
Damn.
In hopes of spurring some excitement in the Obama campaign, Palin has been invited to speak at the Democratic convention. So has Trig.
The question is, how much did the grifter get paid, NOT to speak at the convention?
I don’t think Palin not speaking will have any impact on support for Romney.
Actually, this is probably a landmark moment in the Palin trajectory. The new leadership of the party makes it clear that they are better off without her – she is going to have to come up with an entirely new shtick if she ever hopes to be a player again…
The one small sign that the Republican Party has not completely lost their collective mind.
My guess: after weeks/months of trying to wrangle a decent spot at the convention, she’s going proactive to make it look like she’s declining rather than not being invited. It’s quite a good strategy for her personally – looks less like a snub.
The overall tone is much more one-for-all-and-all-for-one than much of her chatter since she announced she wasn’t running herself. Is she starting to realize she’s not exactly making more friends than her core group at Fox? Also: gotta love the cluelessness in the claim that she’s going to try to persuade Independents to vote for R/R. Yeah, right.
I was looking forward to 20 minutes of her gibberish. She talks a lot and says absolutely nothing. I love when she chops a sentence into three or more parts and then says them in random order.
Am I the only one that gets a hard-on by imagining a Republican ticket of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann?
Well, if you take a look at conservatives4palin.com, they’re all claiming that they’re going to vote for Obama or not vote at all now that The Queen of the Tea Party has been dethroned by the Dauphin from Wisconsin . Of course, last week a lot of them were still confident that President Palin and Vice President West would be inaugurated in January 2013, so they probably aren’t tethered too tightly to reality.
NO!!
Great, now she can go back to pounding down Botox cocktails with Linda Tripp and Orly Taitz.
Nah, she’ll join Trump down here in Sarasota and address the throns from here. They all wind up in Sarasota at some point 🙁
I used to live in Sarasota. Sarasota was the place where we made the fateful (for us) decision to do Animorphs. BIg turning point. Our last crappy garden apartment.
Well, she’s now offered to “protect” Paul Ryan from the slings and arrows of outrageous media coverage, an offer couched in terms of her own martyrdom at the hands of McCain’s advisors, who threw her unprepared to the wolves of the press because they were all secretly working for Mitt Romney back in 2008.
If I were Ryan, I’d be saying “Thank, but no thanks.” Once I stopped laughing, that is.
A flashback to a moment that is probably relevant:
@Daniel Morris: @Derrick:
You two are a couple of real sick puppies, you know that?
Not speaking at all surprises me, as I figured the GOP would want to take advantage of her popularity with the base. I didn’t necessarily expect a preferred timeslot, but she’s still the VP candidate from 2008.
@JKB: Why are you nasty?
Sorry Sarah, your “Gibberish” and incomprehensible jargon has stumped the nation all too often.
Thank goodness.
Poor Sarah. I remember when Republicans would argue so enthusiastically that she was brilliant and savvy and was going to be. . . well, something other than a national joke.
But Republicans talk all kinds of nonsense.
A big, giant, “Toldja so.”
@michael reynolds: If it’s any consolation your old digs probably went condo and the place is now vacant.
Anyone remember that Starship song from the 80’s?
Sarah, Sarah, no time is a good time for goodbyes…