Oh No! More Sarah Palin.(Updated)

If you read my last post on the column by Bob Herbert you will remember it was about Republican's changing the subject. This next bit of garbage is along the same line.


Before Sarah Palin is history I will comment on the latest bump in the road.

It seems that the Palin family photos are disappearing from the Alaska government site and the Republican site. The conspiracy theory crowd are interpreting that to imply that Sarah is not the mother of Trig (the Down Syndrome baby) but that her (then 16 year old) daughter is. A family photo showing a 'baby bump' on the daughter and showing the adorable youngest girl to be much older than another photo (that was supposedly taken later) combined with a story of Sarah's activities on the day she was supposedly in labor are fueling the suspicions. This whole convoluted scenario gets weirder.

If the media would just ignore the whole thing, as they should, there would be no need for speculation or interest. Who cares? Well, unfortunately, the type of people who read the National Enquirer do.

The conspiracy theorists carry this further by wondering if, by fueling suspicion and creating a feeding frenzy of news, this is the object of the whole issue. They speculate that Karl Rove has masterminded this whole scenario to take the news away from Obama. Then at the last minute, Palin will resign and a more acceptable candidate will replace her. Talk about George Orwell!

I couldn't care less who the mother of the baby is and I sincerely wish no one else would. If rational people would ignore the whole issue and get down to what we should be talking about it would be a much more interesting and worthwhile election.

Having said all that, here I am fueling the controversy. I guess I'm as guilty as the next guy.

After I finished this more information came into my mail box on Sarah and I will share it with you now. Progressive Majority sent this.

Sarah Palin is a GOPAC graduate.

GOPAC was founded in 1978 by conservatives who knew they were going to have to work outside the Republican Party to take it over. They knew they would have to recruit their own kind to run to wrest control of government from the Democrats. They knew they needed a long-term plan to build their "farm team".

Newt Gingrich took over the organization in the 1980s. You see, Gingrich wasn't satisfied with the election of Ronald Reagan. He wanted to see conservatives in control at the local, state AND national levels - even if it took a generation. Under Gingrich's leadership, GOPAC stepped up its candidate recruitment efforts, sought out "movement conservatives" and taught them how to run campaigns and talk about issues in a way that galvanized the far right base while not completely alienating moderate voters.

It worked. During the next 20 years, they took over the majority of state legislatures and governors. They single handedly led the "Republican Revolution" that took over Congress in 1994. They elected George W. Bush.

And, yesterday, one of their own accepted the Republican nomination for vice president of the United States.

If you're a conservative, that's how you go from being mayor of a small town to governor to the very top of the ticket.

Don't think for a moment, despite Democratic victories in 2006 and a good climate for 2008, that they are finished.

Today, GOPAC is the sixth largest national political organization in the country. It is three times larger and 26 years older than Progressive Majority.