Fresh off her kiss of death endorsement of ol’ Gluehorse McCain, who is currently looking at a 40% approval rating in Arizona, and her flip-flop on keeping her upcoming Tea Party convention speaking fee of a cool $100K, Sarah Palin is flitting around the country and waving her PAC checkbook around in a nouveau riche attempt to buy credibility:
Sarah Palin injected herself into another 2010 campaign Monday, with her endorsement of Rand Paul, son Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky. “Governor Palin is providing tremendous leadership as the Tea Party movement and constitutional conservatives strive to take our country back,” Rand Paul said in a statement. “Sarah Palin is a giant in American politics. I am proud to receive her support.” Paul also acknowledged that he “has received a generous donation from Governor Palin’s PAC.”
Rand isn’t the only one to receive a “generous donation” from Palin’s PAC. Seems the Snowbilly Princess has been using her PAC to buy up a metric assload of copies of “Going Rogue”:
Ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) PAC spent more money buying copies of Palin’s best-selling book than it gave in contributions to political candidates, according to new FEC reports. The papers filed over the weekend show SarahPAC spent $47,777 on copies of “Going Rogue” during the last 6 months of the year. Meanwhile, she handed out just $43K in donations to candidates seeking federal office.
The L.A. Times, however, reports the amount is closer to $63K.
At first blush, this deal smacks of Palin laundering PAC funds for her own bank (hey, it’s hard to keep kids in $60K Cadillac Escalades these days), but the transactions may be perfectly legal because she’s no longer an elected official or even running for office . . . yet.
Still, buying up anywhere between $47K and $63K worth of books for “fundraiser donor fulfillment” is still a lot of books, even if they were purchased either through her agreement with Harper Collins or at full price:
If the campaign team paid the $13.50 hardcover price currently featured on Amazon, those campaign dollars bought more than 3,500 copies of the book. If they paid the full $28.99 hardcover price, they bought more than 1,600 copies. However, if they paid the $9.99 harcover price batted around during the Great Walmart and Amazon Price War, they could have purchased more than 4,700 copies of “Going Rogue: An American Life.”
Well, that’s one way to push that godawful piece of shit up the New York Times best seller chart.
Palin is certainly proving herself capable of an executive position at bulk-order kingpin Regnery Publishing, just in case the whole Fox commentator/wingnut welfare/public speaker thing doesn’t work out. It would be a perfect fit, since both parties truck in parting conservatives from their money.
