Palin Takes in the Sights

BY JOHN FUND – If Sarah Palin is giving serious thought to running for president, she is pursuing the most unorthodox of strategies.

The summer bus tour put on by her political committee kicked off on Sunday with a brief appearance at the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally. She then proceeded to make unannounced visits to various Washington, D.C., monuments as well as Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. On Monday, her bus left Washington for stops at Fort McHenry in Baltimore and the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. No advance notice of her stops is being given to either reporters or supporters. Updates on her bus tour appear on the SarahPAC website, but only after she has shown up at a memorial.

Ms. Palin denies that her bus tour has anything to do with a budding campaign. “This isn’t a campaign bus,” she told reporters. “This is a bus to be able to express to America how much we appreciate our foundation and to invite more people to be interested in all that is good about America and to remind ourselves we don’t need to fundamentally transform America, we need to restore what’s good about America.”

But having a stealth bus trip doesn’t do much for the visibility of the monuments and places Ms. Palin is visiting. It also isn’t helping her with local GOP leaders who are scratching their heads about the lack of communication they’ve had with Team Palin.

“I question the value of the ‘theater’ by some candidates,” Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Rob Gleason told Politico.com. “We seldom hear from presidential candidates as they are all focused on the early primary states. They will need us some day and we will remember those who helped us with party building.”

The conclusion that most Republican leaders are reaching is that Ms. Palin is doing a very good job of keeping her visibility high in the national media. But building a campaign organization for 2012 clearly is not front and center in her thinking.

Comments

comments