todd palin

Thanks for the memories. Now please go away. Yes, we’re talking about you, Rudy Giuliani. And you, Wolf Blitzer. We no longer wish to be a swing state. Henceforth the residents of the state of Minnesota promise to vote reliably Democratic. Or Republican. It doesn’t much matter which — just as long as you people promise to stop showing up in our little slice of the frozen tundra seeking to feel our pain. But to memorialize the horrors visited upon us during the (still ongoing) campaign season, we offer — in honor of our favorite member of the Statewide General Election Canvassing Board — the G. Barry Anderson Awards.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carried a quizzical interview by Deborah Solomon with President George W. Bush’s former senior adviser, Karl Rove. Across 21 questions, Rove and Solomon covered a lot of political and even emotional territory, with an often-combative Rove laying claim to having had his feelings hurt by Solomon on an earlier occasion.
The highlight, though, [...]

Newsweek is rolling out its “How He Did It, 2008″ series of untold secrets from inside the presidential campaigns that were embargoed until after the election. Even among revelations about foreign cyber attacks against both campaigns, the Sarah Palin material is most riveting:
One aide estimated that [Palin] spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported [...]

During my tour of northern Minnesota with Todd Palin last week, I spoke with Robert Leiseth at a rally in Moorhead. Plastered with “Sportsmen for McCain” stickers, he discussed his fears that Obama “is steering us into socialism,” his praise for Sarah Palin and his concerns about Joe Biden’s experience. But his most pointed words were about Obama’s ethnicity. Leiseth believes Obama is “an Arab who is a little tiny bit African American.”

Todd Palin’s five-city, two-day campaign across northern Minnesota ended in the city of Moorhead in the northwestern part of the state, just across the Red River of the North from the bigger city of Fargo, N.D. There, Minnesota Independent reporter Paul Demko took in one last T-Pal stump speech at Scheel’s sporting goods store before interviewing people outside the store, some of whom had traveled two hours or more for the short, five-minute speech. Here are highlights, in a seven-minute video clip that touches on Abraham Lincoln, Saul Alinsky and Pythagoras.

Barack Obama’s visit to Cape Fear BBQ and Chicken in Fayetteville, N.C. on Sunday afternoon drew some nasty responses from patrons, according to a report from Politico. While many diners applauded his arrival, Diane Fanning began yelling “socialist, socialist, socialist” at the Democratic presidential candidate.

Later, Obama came to the long table where Fanning and [...]

Does “First Dude” Todd Palin believe Alaska should secede from the United States? The journey continues to Moorhead and Duluth.

Though he is not officially a member of the executive branch, Todd Palin is renowned for attending meetings with the governor and legislators or other public officials, many of whom have described his (almost totally silent) presence as odd or even discomfiting. Todd Palin, for example, has been copied on e-mails related to policy and personnel matters, and he’s taken numerous trips — with and without his wife — as a representative of the state.

By his own account, Palin regards none of this as inappropriate.

The event was billed as a Sportsmen for Norm Coleman rally featuring Todd Palin, but the guests of honor — besides Norm and the First Dude, they included Coleman’s wife Laurie and National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre — arrived to find the crowd in the midst of a full-throated “We love Sarah!” chant.

Reporting is generally not considered an extreme sport. On most days the only physically exhausting duty I engage in is making (repeatedly ignored) phone calls to Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign. But it’s not every day that you are tasked with covering Todd Palin — champion snowmobile racer, “First Dude” of Alaska, oil field worker, commercial fisherman, former Alaska Independence Party member and spouse of the potential Vice President of the United States.