Examining the guts and gears of the Sarah Palin political machine.

From the Daily Beast:

The way the endorsement game has unfolded is no accident. It’s all part of a media strategy mapped out last April, when SarahPAC staffers gathered at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans to hear their boss speak. The event also gave the cyberoffice (aides are scattered around the country) a chance to meet together face to face instead of the usual conference calls and emails they rely on to make the PAC tick.

The meeting was harmonious, but some strategic tensions ran beneath the surface. Staffers decided not to hire a communications director, but rather to continue to rely on Palin’s tweets and Facebook posts as the primary way of dialoguing with the public and the press (aside from her contract with Fox News). Some in attendance were upset by this course of action, preferring instead to hire an official press spokesperson—a role that remains as yet unfilled.

The meeting was run by Jason Recher, her closest aide at the time, who has been by Palin’s side since the 2008 campaign. A loyal aide, he accompanied her to countless rallies and paid speeches, not to mention every stop along on her Going Rogue book tour. But Recher has since been sidelined for Mansour. A SarahPAC staffer described Recher as “being in the hot seat,” although he is still employed by the PAC.

All of her close aides must adhere to a code of honesty and total loyalty to the candidate. No one is allowed to speak to the press without Palin’s express approval. (Palin declined repeated requests by The Daily Beast for an interview). “She is attracted to people who are going to take a bullet for her because she really will ask you to one day,” an aide from the 2008 campaign said.

That suits the members of her team just fine. “One of the things I have learned about her is her instincts are really good,” Mansour said. “She respects her team and her team respects her and we’ve learned that she knows what she’s doing.”

The author of this piece, Shushanna Walshe, is another of those reporters, much like Dave Weigel, that I fear may have had a sip or two of the Palin spiked kool-aid.  She is not wholeheartedly a Palin sympathizer or apologist, but she has a tendency to look at Palin with a much less critical eye than many other reporters, those put off by Palin's demonization of their craft and resistance to media access, might be.

I was first notified that Walshe might not be the most trustworthy source of Palin information when somebody pointed out that she was twittering back and forth with RAM on a fairly consistent basis and using that information to write her articles, much like she did this one.  Now as all of us know, RAM is now the high priestess of all Palin propaganda, and she does NOT communicate with anybody who does not show Palin in the proper light.

Sarah Palin herself is VERY good at identifying reporters who are susceptible to her influence.  Don't forget that when she became Governor she quickly tapped both Juneau reporter Bill McAllister, and KTUU's Meg Stapleton to help block access from the very media of which they used to be a part.  It is sort of like taking a shark out of the water and conditioning it to attack other sharks before placing it back into the ocean.  Diabolical, isn't it?

So now that Palin does not have an OFFICIAL press person she simply finds the weak members of the media herd to separate and provide a certain, shall we say, deal with the devil?  You can have some carefully controlled access, just so long as you write what WE want you to write.  One mistake and you are put on the media BANNED list.  And lord knows there are a lot of us on THAT list.

That is why Michael Joseph Gross, the writer of the Vanity Fair piece,  was attacked so viciously.  He refused to compromise his journalistic integrity for the story.  Besides he was gay, so he was not a man who wanted to sleep with her, nor a woman who wanted to BE her, which meant that she had no way of seducing him into writing a positive article about her. In a situation like that it is "Palin-bots attack!", every single time.

And why do you think she lost her freaking mind when Joe McGinniss moved in next door?  He is not a gay man, but I saw his wife once and she is a stunning woman who makes Sarah Palin look like an unfortunate hookup after a night of binge drinking.  That plus the fact that he is infinitely more intelligent and professional than many of the other authors or journalists Palin has encountered made him her worst next door neighbor nightmare.

However having said ALL of that, this article is worth reading because, even though let's face it Walshe only got to see a few inches beneath the skin, it is the first real view of HOW the Palin machine functions.  And that is both interesting for informational purposes and helpful in identifying her weaknesses.

Thanks for the information Shushanne, now whatever you do try NOT to get turned to the dark side.  That way leads to madness. If you guys want to read more of Walshe's Daily Beast article, just click the link at the top.