Sarah Palin

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Republicans can’t figure out Kamala

Welcome to Thunderdome. The essential divide between Republican insiders on how to attack Kamala Harris is stuck, swinging back and forth between the question of inauthentic climber or authentic leftist. Is she an untrustworthy chameleon who was against fracking before she was for it? Or is she a San Francisco Democrat elitist who was the furthest senator to the left? When the George W. Bush re-elect had to tangle with John Kerry, they went the unreliable flip-flopper route — something Chris LaCivita is very familiar with as the then-media advisor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — to great success.

Thursday

Sarah Montalbano

Sarah Palin isn’t done yet

Sarah Palin was defeated by Democrat Mary Peltola on Wednesday in a special election to fill the late Don Young’s seat in the House. She lost by a margin of 3 percent amid Alaska’s first ranked-choice voting election. Ranked-choice voting is when voters get to select their second, third, and so on choices of candidates in a field, rather than choosing just one candidate. Though left-leaning publications like the New York Times have wasted no time in declaring “defeat for MAGA Republicans,” such a conclusion is premature. Palin’s failure to win four short months in Congress does not necessarily mean conservatism has been repudiated. It mostly reflects the warped mechanics and unintuitive strategies of ranked-choice voting.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Lincoln Project founder melts down, part 348913

For many years, Cockburn tried to become a board member at the Lincoln Project. Not because he wanted to sabotage them from within — though that would have been fun — but because he, too, can't get enough of the juicy gossip (though shaving and bleaching his head would have been a definite minus). Since then, the Lincoln Project has imploded several times over, while its most visible founder, Steve Schmidt, has gone on a Tarantino-cum-Elmer Fudd revenge tour against seemingly everyone in his life. The latest target in his (quivering) crosshairs is the McCain family, which even Cockburn can't help but find remarkable. It was John McCain, after all, who gave Schmidt his biggest break as his 2008 presidential campaign manager.

Tuesday

Rachel K. Paulose

Sarah Palin takes the New York Times to court

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is taking the New York Times Company (NYT) to trial in February for alleged defamation. Palin, according to her lawsuit, filed suit in order “to hold…NYT accountable for defaming her by falsely asserting what they knew to be false: that Governor Palin was clearly and directly responsible for inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011.” Palin is alleging that NYT “falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Gov. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011, mass shooting at a political event in Tucson, Arizona, during which he shot thirteen people, severely wounding United States congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and killing six others.