Gov. Palin signs books in Metairie, Louisiana

"You may have shaken hands with the future president"
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Mary Sparacello of The Times-Picayune reports on Gov. Palin's book signing event this evening in Metairie, an unincorporated city of about 145,000 adjacent to New Orleans:

Nancy Adams and her daughter Jolie Taubin of Covington had waited all day Monday to be one of the first people to meet Sarah Palin and shake her hand at a book signing in Metairie. They said the wait was worth it.

"It was an experience you won't forget," Adams told her 9-year-old daughter after they met Palin.

Adams and Taubin were two of hundreds of people who waited hours to meet Palin on Monday night at a book-signing at Barnes & Noble on Veterans Memorial Boulevard.

Palin signed copies of "America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag." The book hit bookshelves Nov. 23, and Metairie was an early stop on the national tour. Palin will be in Baton Rouge at a Books-a-Million on Tuesday morning.

When Palin stepped behind the book-signing table, the excited crowd cheered and broke out in scattered chants of "Run, Sarah, run," encouraging Palin to run for president in 2012.

About 300 people were waiting in line Monday morning for the bookstore's doors to open so they could buy the book and get a wristband for the signing, said Jennifer Simon, community relations manager for the Metairie store. Bookstore employees wouldn't release a final count of wristbands given out.

Palin smiled widely, shook hands and spoke with everyone as she autographed books.

"Six children," the mother of five and former vice presidential candidate exclaimed to one woman. "You have me beat."

Attendees said they were surprised at how friendly Palin was. "She's very personable, very charming," said Gwen Mitchell of Destrehan.

[More]

Gov. Palin was last in the New Orleans area in April at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

More from WGNO-TV (here, here and here) and WWL-AM/FM (here).

- JP

Jindal fundraiser beaten in New Orleans (Updated)

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According to The Hayride, leftist goons violently attacked a couple in New Orleans Friday night for the crime of wearing Sarah Palin pins. After being savagely beaten by the thugs, Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown were hospitalized; her for a broken leg and he with a broken jaw, a broken nose and a concussion.

Bautsch, who is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's chief campaign fundraiser, said that she and Brown were followed by their attackers from Brennan's Restaurant, where the fundraising dinner was held. As they were walking, the Hayride report says, she heard one of the thugs say, “Let’s get them, they have Palin pins on.” Just two blocks away from the famous restaurant, they were ambushed by the group.

An Associated Press report describes how a large crowd of protesters, including students and professors at the University of New Orleans, marched to the Hilton Hotel Friday. Many of then apparently continued on to Brennan's to protest there. The Hayride says the protest turned ugly outside of the restaurant.

The left and their media apologists continually claim that it is Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin supporters who incite violence, but when it comes to actual broken bones, bloody noses and bitten-off fingers, it's the leftists who are doing the damage. Perhaps they were inspired by the Inciter-in-Chief, who told his supporters to "get in the faces" of those who oppose Obama and his radical left agenda. If that wasn't a big enough clue, Obama was more specific at a Philadelphia fundraiser, where he said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

A Times-Picayune story quotes a Jindal spokesman who said that Allee Bautsch underwent surgery over the weekend and won't fully recover for two to three months. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and Joe Brown. You can email "get well" wishes to Allee through Gov Jindal's office here. Flowers are never a bad idea, either.

The full Hayride report is here.

Update: Michelle Malkin says some details of the Hayride story are disputed by Jindal press secretary Kyle Plotkin, who told her that the couple were not wearing Palin pins. The Hayride has now dialed its story back, without disclosing its source for the original report that the two were wearing Palin pins. Who told them that? What is the source of Allee's quote about what she allegedly overheard one of the attackers say?

h/t: Kristinn

- JP

Are More Palin policy speeches in the cards? 'Absolutely,' she says

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CNN Producer Peter Hamby caught up with Sarah Palin in New Orleans after her well-received speech at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Hamby only had time to ask the former Alaska governor a couple of questions before aides ushered her into an SUV waiting to take her to the airport. Hamby inquired of the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate whether she would be delivering more policy addresses in the future:

"Absolutely," Palin told CNN in a brief interview outside her New Orleans hotel on Friday. "The more of that, the better."

[...]

Palin, emerging from the Windsor Court Hotel wearing a zip-up NASA sweater over her suit, told CNN she had a "blast" addressing the conference and promised to continue with a policy-oriented message.

"It was fun to talk to people of something of substance, like energy, that is so appreciated by these folks because they know that unless we have this energy independence, we will not be prosperous, we will not be secure," she said. "That's what I wanted to concentrate on today."

The next major appearance on Gov. Palin's calendar is a Tea Party in Boston Wednesday of next week.

- JP

Elephants On The Bayou: An SRLC Preview:

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Our friends at US for Palin will be live streaming Gov. Palin's SRLC speech here:



US for Palin contributor Adrienne Ross will be live blogging from the event in New Orleans also at Motivation Truth. Both websites are part of the Blogs 4 Palin blogging community.

And according to Taegan Goddard, C-SPAN will be cablecasting the entire event.

Mark Barabak at the LA Times has a preview of the four-day conference:

When Republican activists gather in New Orleans for three days of strategizing and speeches starting Thursday, one big attraction will present a big question: Is Sarah Palin angling for the party's 2012 presidential nomination?

The former Alaska governor will join several other possible White House contenders addressing 3,000 or so party loyalists at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Also appearing are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia; Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum; and, by video, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

[...]

Her appearance will be one of a growing number of political speeches Palin has given since leaving the governor's office, publishing a best-seller and launching herself as a TV personality. The question is whether Friday's appearance is a step toward a White House run, or simply another marketing effort -- not that one necessarily precludes the other.

"It helps her celebrity," said David Carney, a GOP strategist attending the conference. "It also exposes her to 50, 60, 100 people from different states who will go back to their Republican Central Committee meetings . . . or the steering committees for various candidates . . . and say, 'We need to get Gov. Palin out here for our Lincoln Day dinner, or let's have a rally and invite her.'"

His full piece is here, and it comes with the usual lamestream media bias warning.

Elsewhere in the LSM, David Chalian of ABC News poses the question that the Romney and Pawlenty teams must have pondered:

"If Sarah Palin, with her mega-wattage superstar status sucking up all the available oxygen in the room, is it worth sharing a stage and competing for some attention?"

Ed Morrissey, who will be in New Orleans to report on the convention, sees this as a test for Gov. Palin:

"The test may not be of her as much as it is of her intent. If she decides to run, she would be formidable, with a large base of passionate supporters. So far, though, she has mainly signaled an interest in activism and in expanding her media reach. The SRLC may give a clearer idea what she has planned for the next two years."

In her SRLC speech Friday, Sarah Palin is expected to specifically address President Obama’s energy policy. At The Cypress Times, John Winder suggests the governor's address in New Orleans "may very well be her act of throwing down the gauntlet to officially challenge the status quo thus setting the stage for a dramatic 2012 election."

The Washington Post's newest blogger Dave Weigel has a post up that looks at some of the pre-conference maneuvering going on regarding the SRLC straw poll. Weigel reported last month that the Ronulans snapped up 800 tickets for the event to make sure their guy gets the long straw in the poll.



- JP

Politico: Sarah Palin just says "No" to corrupt RNC

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Politico reports that Sarah Palin has asked the Republican National Committee to stop using her name in its promotion of a fundraising event she does not plan to attend:

Palin’s staff has twice told the RNC to remove her name from an invitation sent to donors, obtained by POLITICO on Wednesday, showing her as an “invited” speaker to the four-day fundraiser in New Orleans, timed to coincide with the SRLC event in Louisiana.

Palin, who will appear at SRLC, “will not take part in any RNC fundraiser in New Orleans,” an aide said.

Gov. Palin doesn't take too kindly to people using her to promote events that she prefers not to be associated with:

Palin previously asked to be removed from a Conservative Political Action Conference invitation, which twice listed her as an invited speaker though she hadn’t agreed to attend the event.

Sarah Palin is right to tell the RNC to stop using her name to promote its events and raise money. We don't blame her a bit for not wanting her name to be associated with such a corrupt and dysfunctional organization as the RNC. Recent news headlines about Chairman Michael Steele's lavish spending on himself and some committee members' idea of a fun night out on the town demonstrate that RNC is not an entity any sane person would want to enable. Plus, the RNC's “six-figure transfer” of funds to support Dede Scozzafava and its history of funneling large sums of cash to Arlen Specter clearly demonstrate that donors would be better off directing their contributions to individual campaigns and PACs rather than trusting the RNC to do it for them.

Well done, Gov. Palin.

- JP