Palin: "It's Time to Take Our Country Back"
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin reacts with Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matthew Strawn, Friday, Sept. 17, 2010, in Des Moines, Iowa.
/ AP PhotoDES MOINES, Iowa -- The Iowa Republican Party freely admitted that this year's Reagan Day Dinner would not have been quite the same without Sarah Palin.
"We anticipate that it will be the largest and best attended Reagan Dinner that the party has had in recent years," state Republican chairman Matt Strawn said in an interview.
As it was, 50 news organizations and some 1,000 dinner guests came to the auditorium in downtown Des Moines to hear from the woman who is more than the belle of the Republican ball these days.
"She is a formidable force and may be the most formidable force in the Republican Party," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Friday.
Of course, the Democrats may have a vested interest in promoting the former Alaska governor whose poll numbers have been declining this summer and whose electability, at this point, is an open question. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe scoffed the other day that Palin is the best organizer and fundraiser the Democrats in Iowa could have.
But Democrats have belittled opponents in the past who turned their grins into frowns on election day. Ronald Reagan comes quickly to mind as an "un-electable" former actor who nonetheless ousted a sitting president in the first of two landslide elections.
Palin was greeted warmly by the Republicans here. And she said what they wanted to hear.
"We don't need to fundamentally transform America," said said. "We need to restore America."
Interactive Map: CBS News Election 2010 Race RatingsShe arrived in Iowa amid much speculation about her future plans, given the fact that Iowa holds the first actual voting contest -- the caucuses -- in the presidential nominating process every four years.
"By going to Iowa, Sarah Palin gets to keep all of her options open," explained CBS News political analyst John Dickerson. "She can be a Republican kingmaker and she can start paving the way for a possible presidential run."
And she definitely has had an impact. Her list of favored candidates -- many of them insurgents supported by the amorphous Tea Party movement -- has been lengthening by the week. Her latest achievement, Christine O'Donnell's blockbuster upset in Delaware's GOP senate primary.
"The [party] hierarchy, they're not likin' it," Palin said Thursday while stumping for another of her endorsements, Rand Paul, in Kentucky.
And yet while Palin is undeniably popular with the Republican base, many of the party faithful say they don't think she is presidential timber. They may be holding out to see the second coming of Mitt Romney, a failed candidate in 2008, but who is returning to the state next month. Or there is Tim Pawlenty, the governor of neighboring Minnesota. He has hired staff on the ground here in Iowa and has made several trips to the state. Or there is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who party pros here say has been working the hardest, visiting here seven times in recent months.
Palin's seeming preference for the well-paid big speeches over the hand-to-hand slogging that Iowans appreciate so much could be a problem if she decides to make the race. That may account for a finding in our recent CBS News-New York Times poll that by 67 to 18 percent, Americans believe she is more interested in staying in the public eye than electing conservatives.
"If a candidate is thinking they can run a sort of celebrity candidacy rather than a true grassroots presidential campaign, they're going to be sadly mistaken," said Eric Woolson, who ran Mike Huckabee's victorious caucus campaign here in 2008.
Palin's Motive Questioned For Iowa Visit
"She's going to need to make it clear that she's willing to put in the hours and to put in the visits to Iowa," he said. And though Palin employs Twitter and Facebook effectively to get her message out, 140 characters won't be a good way to connect with Iowans, Woolson cautioned.
For now though Palin is urging Republicans to stay focused on the immediate goal: the midterm elections.
"We can't wait until 2012 to get our country on the right track," she said. "We need to start now by electing strong leaders who aren't afraid to shake it up, to rein in the federal government. It's time for no more business as usual.
"It's time to take our country back."
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Bush's proposal to invest the Social Security funds in Wall Street?
Drill Baby, Drill, despite uneforcement of safe drilling practices?
Rumsfeld's and Cheney's "50 Billion, tops" cost of the Iraq invasion?
Bush's 1st term agenda...that had a Defense Budget that was withdrawn when inquiries arose about a Dept of Disinformation?
NAFTA that was pushed through with a REPUBLICAN CONGRESS that exported American jobs overseas?
Wars for terrorists that are somehow not POWS when caught to be held anywhere and tortured in spite of the Geneva Conventions on Warfare and treatment of civilians in and from a war zone?
The leadership in Washington has done the following:
1) Americans asked Washington to help reduce the costs of health. Instead Washington forced a horrible health care bill on a majority of Americans who did not want it. It increases the cost of health care for most Americans, and is nothing more than an expansion of power by the federal government at the expense of business and taxpayers.
2) These people irresponsibly overspent 100s of billions of dollars the US didn't have on bailouts (President Bush started it and President Obama accelerated it) and bogus stimulus packages.
3) Instead of securing the border and enforcing federal immigration laws, the President and other members of Congress have made war on Arizona Americans as they attempt to protect themselves from an invasion of illegal immigrants.
4) These people have focused on an extremist agenda, instead of the millions without jobs. You can not grow the federal government on the backs of business and taxpayers during a recession, and expect job creation.
5) President Obama and others in Congress want the President Bush tax cuts to expire, which will result in redirecting money away from the economy and push it into Washington. This will impact jobs negatively.
6) Congress has maintained a 9.5% unemployment rate for over a year, and the President now states that he expects a 9% unemployment rate into 2012. This is absolutely unacceptable.
7) These leaders have given the United States a $13.3 trillion national debt, which causes close to 20% of the budget to be spent on the interest alone.
8) This Congress gave the people of the United States a record breaking $1.47 trillion deficit for this year.
9) The economy is such that we continue to have massive foreclosures on homes.
10) These leaders have horribly mismanaged Social Security and Medicare to the point of going bankrupt. This year alone, Medicare was cut by $500 billion. Yet they spent hundreds of billions of dollars for new programs.
I realize that this has not all occurred over the past 2 years, but over the past 20 months the problems have accelerated. These people in leadership have FAILED the trust of the American people, and they have NOT earned the privilege to continue in leadership positions.
Do I want to take the country back from those who have done all of this? YES!