Okay, now that I have ensured that I will receive lots of hateful comments…. Sarah Palin’s decision not to attend CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) is ridiculously petty. I will grant that CPAC should not have let the Birchers be minor sponsors. I don’t understand that decision. But this bit about David Keene and Fed Ex/UPS (read the link for explanations of these references to specific issues) was dealt with months ago, and Keene certainly explained it to my satisfaction and to the satisfaction of most conservative bloggers as well. In fact, the issue is SO “over and done with” that it cannot be anything more than mere pretext. Somehow I don’t think Sarah Palin has a long record of letting her schedule be determined by the wishes of a delivery company. (And I say this as somebody who has editorialized quite strongly in favor of the FedEx position in that dispute, which I gather is the position that Palin in effect takes, which means that my beef clearly isn’t with her position on that dispute itself.) As for Keene supposedly complaining last year when she pulled out of a scheduled CPAC event: Hell, I would complain too if a rising gubernatorial star committed to come to the single biggest conservative event of the year and then backed out (IF that is what happened). If that is what happened — and again, I do NOT know the circumstances, so there MAY be a legitimate explanation — then unless Palin had a really good reason, she did effectively “diss” not just Keene but the conservative movement, in which case Keene would have been right to complain.

What I do know is this: I saw Keene at the GOP convention in 2008, early on, and he was positively gushing about Palin, absolutely thoroughly excited about her selection as Veep nominee and totally supportive. I don’t blame him, therefore, for being disappointed at her absence in 2009.

What this really looks like is that Palin seems to assume she has conservative activists in her hip pocket anyway and thus can refuse to speak to its most enthusiastic activists in order to take a shot at Keene. Well, IF that is true — and I acknowledge this is all based on assumptions that the reports in the links are accurate — then Sarah Palin is playing right into her reputation of being somewhat of a diva. It’s hard to be a diva and a woman of the people at the same time. To paraphrase Fagin from Oliver Twist: I think she better think it out again.