A fluke happened Saturday night at the Tea Party Convention. Sarah Palin....the real Sarah Palin got out. Her handlers were asleep at the switch. Mary Matalin must have been doing something with her kids. Bill Kristol, Dan Senor (Campbell Brown's husband), & Robert Kagan must have been at a cocktail party for the Foreign Policy Institute. Randy Scheuneman must have been mentoring someone else. Rebecca Mansour & Joseph Russo must have been ghostwriting on Facebook for some other candidate. Adam Brickley (a former intern at The Heritage Foundation) must have been starting a web page for someone one else. Or....Sarah Palin went rogue on them.
Anywho.....Palin got off the script. She was nervous. She spoke really fast & lost her place. She looked down frequently & referred to index cards or her notes while she mocked President Obama for using a teleprompter. Her delivery was similar to her resignation debacle as Governor of Alaska. Instead of the crisp, completely coached speech they would have wanted her to deliver, she meandered all over the place. Their puppet delivered a patched together string of lame conservative platitudes. Oh sure, she threw in some new stuff like "hopey-changey" & "a warehouse under God's green earth of resources". In essence, however, it was the usual word salad from Sarah when she is permitted to go off script.
She shouldn't have mentioned John McCain. Crickets in the Convention Hall. But the choir loved hearing about Scott Brown "who rode through Massachusetts on a truck". Just to cover the bases, she threw in Bart Stupak. And...of course, she took the requisite digs at President Obama saying the country actually needed a Commander in Chief instead of a Professor of Law. He's soft on terror, while her "simple plan" of divine intervention & "we win, you lose" would knock those terrorists into shape real quick. You betcha!
Sarah Palin wound up writing on her self in order to make it through the Q & A. Some say they thought they saw the moderator's lips moving as he read along with her whilst she answered a few paltry questions. That's where the old palm came in handy. This is why she MUST be called "The Palm Reader" forevermore.
Why am I so evil? Why did that little smile come across my face as the evening went on? Why did I move closer to the big screen TV to soak it all in? I smiled, & I moved in because I knew the blackberries were buzzing & the cell phones were ringing wherever her handlers were. I smiled because I knew they saw what I saw.
Palin even did her own hair. Kind of a long flip. She looks super cute & much younger when they send her to the hairdresser first. I don't think she'll be doing her own hair from now on. I don't think she'll be delivering such a sloppy, unrehearsed speech anymore. I think her handlers will not take another night off. I think we had a lucky night. But I wouldn't count on too many more. The stakes are too high.