With the career corpse still steaming in the snow bank, many journalists are gleefully rushing to get their Sarah Palin obituaries published before the crime scene is washed clean.

Simply because, after weeks of denying that John McCain was that stupid, I was first shocked to learn that Sarah Palin HAD been chosen as the 2008 running mate while watching Morning Joe. I feel I must include his analysis of her time on Fox News here.

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Okay so not that you have watched it let me say that I disagree with muhc of what Scarborough ad others on the show said.

I DO agree that Roger Ailes is the de facto leader of the Republican party, however I disagree that Sarah Palin EVER had any real opportunity to be anything more than a conservative side show freak.

She is incapable of doing anything more than playing the spokes model for the party. Asking her to weigh in on policy decisions or current affairs is like asking your parrot to look up the definition of a word for you.

Having said that I do agree with this statement from Mika:

“Are you saying that pushing her out of the spotlight is part of making ‘the stupid party’ less stupid?”

Yes I think it is part of the cosmetic approach to "fixing" the Republican party, however I also know that it will NOT fundamentally change anything and that they will continue to promote the kinds of policies that the American people have spoken out against in the last election.


While Joe, and his panel, made some very good points, they also left some meat on the bone that I think deserves to be ripped away.

Fortunately there are other journalists out there with incisors at the ready.

Such as Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, whose headline reads "Cautionary Fail: People Didn’t Kill Sarah Palin’s Career, Guns Did. And had this to say about what happened to her after her tone deaf response to the Arizona shootings:  

Palin’s orbit was forced into decay by that self-inflicted wound. She remained about as popular with the people who already liked her, but after that video address, Palin’s unfavorable ratings shot over fifty percent, and stayed there. Republicans like Newt Gingrich heaped on the criticism, and even Dick Morris acknowledged Palin had made a mistake. It was the first sign of vulnerability in an indestructible media brand. By the time Palin announced she would not run for president, Republican voters had already decided they didn’t want her to.

The Daily Banter is even less forgiving in their assessment:

Leave it to Fox News, the network that cranked the amp on John McCain’s once-naïve ingenue to 11 and made her a political force well beyond the pounding she and McCain took in 2008, to be the one to drop the hammer on her career once and for all. It’s practically Shakespearean that the network that was responsible in so many ways for making Palin is now responsible for breaking her. A couple of days ago, Fox News announced that it wasn’t renewing Palin’s contract as a regular contributor, essentially cratering a deal that had kept Palin rolling in money and at least a minor amount of relevance within the conservative movement and which provided her with her own TV studio in her Alaska home. The reason for Fox’s decision is obvious and can’t be questioned by anyone with a brain and a lick of business sense: Palin’s star has fallen. Even before Roger Ailes made the decision to — in parlance I’m sure Palin herself will understand and would normally relish — take Sarah Palin out into the woods with a rifle and put her down, he knew she had become much more trouble to his network than she was worth. He’d called her “stupid” and had dismissed her dabbling with a run for the presidency in 2012 as a waste of time and was looking for an excuse to drop her; her steady decline as a celebrity, despite her best efforts, ultimately gave Ailes all the reason he needed to kiss her goodbye once and for all. Ailes once said that he hired Palin because she was “hot and got ratings”; these days, she isn’t and doesn’t.

The folks at Smart Politics detail exactly how little bang Roger Ailes received for each buck he paid to Sarah Palin:  

Palin appeared on the network in studio, by satellite, by telephone, or in a pre-taped interview an average of once every 7.2 days during this three-year period, with the vast majority of those coming on two particular programs. 

Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren both interviewed Palin 55 times, combining for nearly three-quarters of her appearances on the network over the last 36 months. (Note: the latter total includes interviews by Griff Jenkins and guest host Martha McCallum on Van Susteren's On the Record program). 

Though the number of appearances were equal, Palin spent a bit more time in the 9 pm EST slot, delivering 72,986 words on Hannity compared to 67,987 words while on On The Record with Van Susteren. 

Overall, 74.4 percent of the words Palin delivered during her political analysis occurred on these two programs. 

Palin generally avoided the more hard-edged interviewers on the network with less than 20 appearances before Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday (13,970 words) and Bill O'Reilly's O'Reilly Factor (10,169) combined. 

Palin also logged in another 5,768 words during the network's various election, primary, or caucus night coverage - usually interviewed by Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly. 

She spoke 18,341 words on other FOX programs, such as The Five, Beck, and Your Money with Neil Cavuto. 

Overall, with reported payments of $3 million across her three-year tenure at FOX, that means Palin was paid an average of $15.85 for the 189,221 words of analysis she provided the network.

What the folks at Smart Politics are apparently too polite to point out is that much of what spilled from Sarah Palin's maw was either nonsensical word salad, angry diatribes against Obama and the media, or blatant attempts to tease her supporters about a possible presidential run and therefore direct more money into SarahPAC. In other words the words themselves were often not worth the spit that spewed out along with them.

Sure she garnered attention and sold advertising at first, but the problem with phony side show attractions is that upon closer inspection the audience realizes that the bearded lady's whiskers are glued on, the strong man is lifting Styrofoam dumbbells, and the miracle pregnancy is nothing more than a square pillow shoved under a pair of stretch pants.

Still waiting for the audience to completely recognize that last one.

However as damning as these articles are, it falls to the people who supported Palin themselves to drive the final stake through the creature's still beating heart.

The SarahPAC numbers came out just a little while ago and they indicate that during this quarter they only garnered donations of $20,790.00 dollars, with expenditures of $67,807.71, which means they are spending more on "postage" and wig care than they are scamming from the sad lonely remnants of her now disappointed supporters. The PAC still has 1.2 million on hand, but with the money gravy train grinding to a stop, and Palin spending more than she brings in, how long can it be before she is offering to vomit forth word salad on a street corner for bus fare?