Former aide rips the hockey mom and former 1/2 term Gov. of Alaska in book
Frank Bailey, a self described “Fox News” Republican, and a former aide to Sarah Palin while she was governor of Alaska, has written a tell all that discusses how he became disillusioned with her, and even makes claims of illegal activity.
A leaked manuscript by one of Sarah Palin’s closest aides from her time as governor charges that Palin broke state election law in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign and was consumed by petty grievances up until she resigned.
The unpublished book by Frank Bailey was leaked to the media and widely circulated on Friday.
The manuscript opens with an account of Palin sending Bailey a message saying “I hate this damn job” shortly before she resigned as Alaska’s governor in July 2009, less than three years into her four-year term. The manuscript goes on for nearly 500 pages, a mixture of analysis, gossip and allegation.
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The manuscript is titled, “In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years.” Bailey is a former Alaska Airlines supervisor who joined Palin’s campaign team at the beginning of her successful run for governor in 2006. He writes in the manuscript how he was charmed and inspired by Palin.
Bailey recounts how he was impressed when she blew the whistle on Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich for doing political work at his state job. Bailey calls himself a Fox News conservative and said he became convinced she had the principles and courage to take on the Alaska Republican political machine.
“Sarah Palin had God’s blessing and people’s love and faith,” he wrote.
But, in Bailey’s telling, the reality was nasty. Minor slights became obsessions, according to Bailey, demanding revenge and if possible, destruction of the opponent’s reputation.
“We set our sights and went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called “Fox News surrogates,” friendly blogs, ghost-written op-eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches,” Bailey wrote.
The right will certainly write this off as another hit piece against Palin, and the left will eat it all up, which the right will cite as further evidence of how terrified liberals are of her, yet many of these so-called hit pieces have common themes - especially seething Palin resentments over various slights, and sometimes a desire for revenge. And Andrew Sullivan notes another one:
The leaked manuscript for a new book on Sarah Palin, “Blind Allegiance,” has made for fascinating reading. There’s a useful summary of its contents at the Anchorage Daily News. But there are some revelations that make sense of what previously just seemed bizarre. Take that awful moment in the Couric interview when Palin was asked what periodicals or newspapers or news sources she read and said “All of them.” Here’s Bailey’s account:
Why did Sarah not name anything, when we knew she spent a fair amount of time reading? The answer boils down to image management. Sarah‘s media diet came exclusively from local sources including the Alaska Journal of Commerce, the Alaska Business Monthly, and the Anchorage Daily News. In addition, various administrative assistants put together a compilation of stories from major Alaskan news sites each morning. This document, referred to as Daily Clips, ran in excess of thirty pages and Sarah digested those capsulated reports by 8:00 a.m. each morning. To suggest she didn‘t read is wrong.
However, in her mind, admitting to this regional-only emphasis would‘ve made her appear less interested in national and international events—which was absolutely the case. Instead of honesty, she panicked and, once again, made matters infinitely worse.
As I sat and watched this salt-in-the-wound interview, I raised my eyes and asked the ceiling, ―Why can‘t she just tell the truth?
The sheer number of unnecessary Palin lies Bailey recounts boggles the mind.
To me, since Palin is perhaps the most polarizing figure in recent memory - more than Bill or Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, maybe even Richard Nixon - stuff like this is commonplace, and several grains of salt should be kept handy. With that said, the number of common themes these so-called hit pieces have leads me to believe that even when the wheat is separated from the chaffe, the truth that remains reveals a very immature, narcissistic, pathologically lying person who shouldn’t be any near the Oval Office, and the very fact that the conservative movement continues to think of her as a rock star, and maybe even the second coming of Ronald Reagan shows just how deluded they are.