Palin to Do RNC Fundraiser in California, But Given Her 69% Disapproval Among Inds, GOP’s Whitman, Fiorina Will Be No-Shows

Palin, Whitman and Fiorina
Palin, Whitman and Fiorina

Sarah Palin will headline a fundraiser in California for the cash-strapped, deficit-spending Republican National Committee on Oct. 16. But with Palin viewed unfavorably by well over two-thirds of California’s independent voters, the state’s two top GOP candidates are sending regrets. It’s likely gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, who just can’t seem to find good household help these days, will be cleaning toilets in her mansion. And the U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina will likely be washing her hair.

Independent voters who have been snookered into believing the Republican Party has changed its fiscally irresponsible ways should take note that the Republican National Committee is currently embroiled in a debilitating financial crisis. Due to inept bookkeeping, lax fundraising and profligate spending, the committee is deeply in debt. After missing its fundraising goal in September by $3.8 million — in a supposedly big GOP year — the RNC’s treasurer was also forced to admit he’d found $1.7 million in unreported debt, more than doubling the party’s insolvency to $2.8 million.

Hoping to correct these shortcomings, the RNC has announced a fundraiser for Saturday, Oct. 16, in Anaheim, Calif., to be headlined by the party’s leading light and top tea bagger, Sarah Palin. Ticket prices range from $20 to $30,400, according to the right-wing cult-owned Washington Times newspaper.

Among those who will not be attending are Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the GOP candidates for California governor and U.S. senator, respectively.

While wags are speculating that Whitman can’t make it because she urgently needs to scrub toilets in her mansion as a result of the en masse resignations of her housekeeping staff and that Carly will be busy that Saturday washing her hair, the campaigns’ actual professed reasons for not showing up — scheduling conflicts — are just as bogus.

The real reason Whitman and Fiorina won’t be there to help their party dig its way out of debt is tha Palin is politically radioactive in California. A new Field Poll [PDF] found that Palin has a 58 percent unfavorable rating in California versus a 33 percent favorable rating — 10 percentage points higher than her disapproval nationwide.

But here is the number that has Whitman and Fiorina scurrying out of sight: Palin’s unfavorable rating among independent voters — the key +vote they both must have to win next month — is a whopping 69 percent. Just one quarter of California independents have a favorable view of Sarah Palin.

As pols seeking to represent California’s 35 million residents, they are arguably the two most prominent women candidates running in the mid-terms — and they are running away from the party’s only female contender for president in 2012. That Fiorina is bailing on Palin must really sting, since it was Palin’s endorsement that supposedly put Fiorina over the top during her primary race and because Fiorina was a surrogate for the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008.

Whitman and Fiorina are likely also concerned that the fundraiser in Anaheim may be a bit of bust. In September — in return for the RNC’s agreement to pay off $250,000 in legal fees related to her ethics charges — Palin signed a fundraising letter for the RNC that underperformed so badly that the RNC’s fundraising for September was $3.8 million less than its goal. (At the same, the Democratic National Committee broke fundraising records by collecting $16 million in small amounts from enthusiastic small donors.)

The other risk for the RNC is that the cost of flying Palin in could offset much of what it is able to raise that Saturday. For example, fundraising reports from the Georgia GOP primary this year showed that the campaign of Karen Handel, the tea bagger candidate for governor who lost the GOP primary after Palin endorsed her, spent $100,000 in campaign funds on a private jet and other costs to fly Palin in for an event.

By the way, this is the first fundraiser scheduled by the RNC in California since it abruptly canceled an event in Beverly Hills that was to have been headlined by Andrew Breitbart, the Los Angeles-based new-media racist provocateur, after he embarrassed the party’s Fox cable channel when they were caught showing deliberately deceptive racist video he had provided. After the RNC canceled its Breitbart fundraiser in August, a spokesman insisted it would reschedule event before the midterms. That has not happened, so far.

Finally, the RNC’s choice of Orange County for the venue of its tea bagger fundraiser is fitting because the county was the birthplace of the John Birch Society, with which the tea party is often compared. And here’s a fun fact: Rep. John Schmitz, an infamous Bircher congressman from Orange County who was so extreme he believed that both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were liberals, was the father of Mary Kay LeTourneau, the teacher who went to prison in 1997 after she had an affair with her adolescent student.

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2 thoughts on “Palin to Do RNC Fundraiser in California, But Given Her 69% Disapproval Among Inds, GOP’s Whitman, Fiorina Will Be No-Shows”

  1. Neither Schmitz nor Le Tourneau were/are examples of conservatives’ claim to Family Values. IIRC, Schmitz had a series of affairs and fathered children outside of his marriage, and LeTourneau had an affair with one of her students and gave birth to two of his children before marrying him when he was 19, after being released from prison for molesting him.

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