Monday, February 1, 2010

Sarah Palin confirms Rand Paul endorsement (Updated)

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After predicting Thursday that an endorsement by Sarah Palin was in the works, Rand Paul's campaign manager claimed Monday in a press release that it's a done deal:
National political icon and conservative leader Sarah Palin has endorsed Dr. Rand Paul in his bid for United States Senate from Kentucky. The Paul campaign has received a generous donation from Governor Palin’s PAC.

Sarah Palin has clearly seen that Rand Paul supports smaller, constitutional government and is taking the fight to the career politicians and will shake up the tax and spend crowd in Washington D.C.

“Governor Palin is providing tremendous leadership as the Tea Party movement and constitutional conservatives strive to take our country back,” Rand said.

“Sarah Palin is a giant in American politics. I am proud to receive her support.”
Politico's Ben Smith notes that the claimed endorsement strengthens the alliance between the Tea Party movement, Ron Paul libertarians and Gov. Palin's conservative grass roots, but adds a cautionary note:
Paul is claiming the endorsement, but worth noting that we haven't had a statement from Palin yet.
As of this Noon CST posting, we haven't seen anything on the governor's Twitter or Facebook Notes pages.

If true, this alliance could go a long way toward quashing all the chatter from the left and their trained media circus about the Tea Party movement "falling apart" -- which, of course, it was never in any danger of doing.

On the downside, Gov. Palin risks losing the support of many Kentuckians who were backing true conservative Bill Johnson, a long shot in the Senate race. Among them is Lisa Graas, a colleague and dear friend of ours who has worked tirelessly for Gov. Palin.

h/t: BluegrassBulletin.com

First Update: The Grayson camp voices its skepticism of the endorsement:
But the campaign manager for Paul's primary rival, GOP Secretary of State Trey Grayson, pointed out that Palin had not issued a statement of support for Paul or commented directly on the reported campaign donation, leaving open the possibility that she had stopped short of offering a formal endorsement.

Nate Hodson called the Paul campaign's announcement "a release by a campaign that has demonstrated previously the ability to report things that are not true or half-truths." Asked if the Grayson camp believed Paul was fabricating support for its candidate, Hodson replied: "It wouldn't be the first time."
Second Update: Says Dave Weigel at The Washington Independent:
TWI’s Rachel Hartman, digging into FEC filings, has not seen a Paul donation yet from SarahPAC — records only go through December 31, 2009.
Third Update: Ben Pershing at the Washington Post:
But is it true? Does the donation mean she is solidly behind his bid?

"My understanding is the check is considered to be an endorsement," Paul said in a phone interview Monday, explaining that Palin's political action committee, Sarah PAC, gave $2,000 to Paul's campaign in recent days.

Paul added that he had not spoken to Palin directly but that his aides had talked to her representatives, who conveyed her support for his campaign. Paul said those conversations would continue and that he hoped she would visit Kentucky at some point to do an event for him.
Um, excuse us, but Paul has not spoken directly to Gov. Palin? On something as important as a political endorsement, are we the only ones who think that the process should at least involve some degree of actual direct communication between endorser and endorsee? A political endorsements, by definition, should be completely unambiguous.

Fourth Update: Sarah Palin has indeed endorsed Rand Paul. Ben Pershing has received confirmation from the Palin Camp:
Her spokeswoman just sent over this statement from the former Alaska governor: "I'm proud to support great grassroots candidates like Dr. Paul. While there are issues we disagree on, he and I are both in agreement that it's time to shake up the status quo in Washington and stand up for common sense ideas."
- JP

17 comments:

  1. Speaking of Lisa Graas. I noticed that she and Publius are not listed anymore as contributors. Is this because Sarah Palin is campaigning for McCain and others not supported by pure conservatives?

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  2. Publius (Warner Todd Huston) was never a frequent contributor because he's busy posting on many other websites and only cross-posted here when he wrote about Sarah Palin.

    Lisa has dropped her support for Gov. Palin over the Rand Paul endorsement. Lisa has worked very hard for Johnson. She has every right to be angry if the Paul endorsement is for real. Lisa says this will really hurt Gov. Palin in Kentucky, and I have no reason to doubt her assessment.

    Although you didn't mention him, Ian Ransom is taking a hiatus from contributing, as he is busy writing another book.

    So it looks like Texas for Palin is a one-man effort again.

    - JP

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  3. Well, you just can't please everybody all the time. I'm sure Gov. Palin did her research before endorsing Rand Paul.
    I will continue to support Sarah Palin.

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  4. Josh,

    Have you talked to Lisa at all today? I don't have a problem with this endorsement but it has to be heartbreaking for her. I hope she gets well soon and can still be friends with Palin supporters even though we disagree on this. I like her and I'll miss her if she just drops off the radar screen.

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  5. I've been sending almost daily communications to SarahPAC telling them about this race and begging them to call me. No one has called. I've been working for Sarah Palin since September of 2008 almost daily, in horrible pain, and can't get a ten-minute phone call from a staffer? It doesn't matter if it's not true. I'm done. It doesn't matter anymore. I'm done. They can't call me??? I'm done.

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  6. I'm sorry, Lisa. I will miss your defenses of the Guv. Good luck with your race.

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  7. Look, the objective here is to get the most conservative candidate POSSIBLE elected. I agree Johnson is a preferable candidate to Paul, however Paul is far ahead of Johnson in name recognition, the polls, and in fund raising. The primary is in three and one half months time, so there is not much more opportunity for Johnson to catch up to Paul and Grayson. Johnson has had many months to gain traction as a candidate and he has failed to do so.

    Realisticlly, Paul is the only candidate with a chance of beating the "establishment machine candidate" Grayson. Sometimes in politics you have to make hard choices and second best choices, in order to achieve your ultimate goal.

    You can choose between being pure and "tilting at windmills", to no effect, or make less than perfect choices and achieve some results. The bottom line is Paul has a chance to beat Grayson - Johnson does not. I would prefer to see Paul in the Senate than Grayson (a Mitch McConnell clone).

    I know a lot of feelings will be hurt by this, and hopefully with time, people will come back to support Sarah. If Sarah runs in the primaries and is beaten by Romney will all of her supporters dessert Romney in the election and vote for Obama? That would be a stupid thing to do.

    Politics is a hard business, and sometimes we have to accept a second best choice and put some "water in our wine" in order to advance the cause.

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  8. Thanks for all that you've done for Sarah, Lisa, and I hope we can still be friends.

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  9. If SaraPac did contribute to Pauls campaign, that does indicate support. But does it rise to the level of endorsement? Sounds like there may be a little stretching going on. We'll soon know. Either way, I feel bad for Lisa. Hope she is not done for good. We still need her.

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  10. Thank you for the clarification about the contributors to T4P; and thank you for carrying on with your great blog.

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  11. Rand Paul does believe in states rights.

    Personally he is also pro-life despite what his bashers say and write.

    His pro-life position on based on the ethical perspective taken by pro-life Libertarians; i.e., Abortion is a hostile act of aggression against another human being, in this case a defenseless human being. Therefore, he is personally opposed to abortion.

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  12. I interviewed Paul's campaign manager and his campaign coordinator before I made a decision about whether or not to support Paul...and what they told me appalled me. It's not just about abortion. I actually did research before making a decision.

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  13. Lisa I can tell you are a great American and a very caring person. What ever decision you make about Sarah most of us will understand.

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  14. John, states don't have "rights". They have "powers". People have rights and the 14th amendment protects the rights of people from being usurped by state power.

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  15. This is the second website I go for Palin news, after C4P. You guys do a great job and I feel sorry Lisa Graas has felt let down. Thanks for all your efforts so far, and thanks to JP for a great site.

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  16. Sorry about the position that you have been put into, Lisa. I will miss reading your posts. I just hope and pray that you will not publically attack Sarah in the blogosphere. That would be very unfortunate. No matter what, all the best to you.

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  17. It's nice to see such compassion from people who commented after I made the comment above that is now infuriating so many others.

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