Shocking: Dave Weigel Doesn't Get Sarah Palin

-By Warner Todd Huston
*
Like most leftists, former Washington Post blogger David Weigel just doesn't get Sarah Palin. Weigel took a look at the year-end contributions from the Political Action Committees (PACs) sponsored by Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin and what he saw there baffled him. While Weigel thought he understood the "strategy" of Romney's donations, he admitted that he just couldn't understand Palin's.

Weigel took a look at the Federal Elections Commission's emerging reporting records of the two GOP player's campaign donations. Weigel figured that Romney was doling out his campaign donations in key areas and to key candidates, all obviously meant to help his likely run for the GOP nomination for president in 2012. So Weigel thought Ronmey had a discernible "strategy" in his PAC donations.

"Romney's donations were alternately strategic, focused on Massachusetts and 2012 states, or big tent," Weigel wrote.

But, Weigel seemed unable to discern any such strategy in Palin's donation record.

Palin's donations don't look anything like this. In October, SarahPAC opened up for 18 House candidates. Twelve of them won. Two -- Arizona's Ruth McClung and Utah's Morgan Philpot -- almost scored upsets. One of them, Mississippi's Bill Marcy, was a black Republican in a hopeless race against Bennie Thompson in Mississippi's safest Democratic district.

It's actually tough to see a strategy in the Palin donations. They match up neatly with the lists of candidates Tea Partiers embraced at the end of the cycle. Maybe that was the strategy.

I have to disagree. It is perfectly easy to see Palin's "strategy." It was one of pushing the conservative, Tea Party agenda, not one of strategerizing to get herself elected president like Romney was doing. Clearly Palin put her money where her ideology was, not where her campaign needs were.

See, this is where so many people -- especially those on the left -- simply can't understand Palin. She's a movement type of gal, not a cold, strategizing, political hack.

Check out Weigel's post for the listing of who received whose money.

-WTH

Warner Todd Huston is editor of Publius' Forum and a contributor to Texas for Sarah Palin as well as Big Government, Right Wing News, and a number of other websites.