After Wednesday’s
all-day drama surrounding Saturday’s Tea Party rally in
Indianola, Iowa — with headliner Sarah Palin reportedly ready to
cancel her scheduled appearance — Palin’s fans were understandably
perplexed.
It appeared that the event’s organizers, a new group called Tea
Party of America founded by Ken Crow, had provoked an unnecessary
controversy by a last-minute decision to add former Delaware Senate
candidate Christine O’Donnell to the rally schedule. Tuesday,
O’Donnell was disinvited and then re-invited, and by Wednesday
morning, Palin’s participation in the event was
reported to be “on hold.” Then O’Donnell was finally disinvited
and, at last word,
Palin had agreed to go on with Saturday’s show.
The very public controversy seemed almost perfectly calculated
to promote the media’s stereotype of Palin as difficult and
demanding.
NBC News reported:
Tea Party of America President Ken Crow told NBC News,
“I had to cancel Ms. O’Donnell” after a conversation with Sarah
Palin aides - and is now hopeful Palin will attend the
Saturday rally in Indianola.
He was told by Palin’s team that he’d have a final answer
shortly.
This comes after failed Delaware Senate candidate Christine
O’Donnell was in, then out, then back in, and now indefinitely out.
And Palin was in, then “on hold.”
Daily Caller reported:
An organizer of the much-publicized tea party rally in Iowa this
weekend says Sarah Palin would not be doing herself any
favors if she drops out of the event.
“I hope that isn’t so…It would hurt her more than hurt
us,” event organizer Ken Crow, the co-founder and
president of the Tea Party of America, told TheDC.
And
Real Clear Politics reported:
While it is clear that O’Donnell’s proposed speaking slot was
not acceptable to Palin’s camp, the Palin aide denied that anyone
on the Palin team had explicitly demanded that O’Donnell be removed
from the speaker’s list.
Palin’s concern arose, the aide said, when an O’Donnell
aide suggested to event organizers that Palin wanted the Delawarean
to share the stage with her.
“They haven’t spoken in over a year,” the aide said of the two
women.
Someone unearthed a quote from event organizer Crow
saying of Palin’s presidential prospects: “I know for a fact
she ain’t gonna run.” The quote prompted
Dave Weigel of Slate to exclaim: “That’s the guy bringing Palin
to Iowa for an event that reporters are attending because they
wonder whether Palin will run!”
Palin supporters wondered why Crow was publicly expressing
such derogatory opinions about his own rally’s headliner.
And then one e-mailed me a photo showing Crow
talking to Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a recent Des Moines GOP
event. The Palin supporter speculated:
This guy Crow has to be doing this all on purpose, for one
reason: to make Palin look bad, for the benefit of someone who
wants to make Palin look bad.
Remember: if they can make the narrative “Tea Party
Woman=Christine O’Donnell=Sarah Palin” stick, then who wins? Rick
Perry.
That speculation may seem far-fetched, but
Stacy Drake of Conservatives for Palin writes: “I do know that
Ken Crow is a Rick Perry supporter who has managed to make a mess
out of a highly publicized event that Governor Palin will be
headlining on Saturday. I also know that he has been trashing
Governor Palin to the press.”
Is this paranoia? Or are Palin’s supporters belatedly
learning why I described Perry’s campaign as “The
Phantom Menace” of Iowa?
