Palin Rumors: Disinvited by Nancy? Divorcing Todd?
On his Air America show last Thursday, Thom Hartmann said he’d heard scuttlebutt suggesting that there’s more to Sarah Palin’s abrupt announcement that she would not be speaking at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Aug. 8, than has been reported.
The rumor, according to Hartmann, had it that Nancy Reagan put the kibosh on Palin’s appearance at the library, probably because she does not like the ugly turn the party of Reagan has taken of late and sees Palin as one of the chief instigators. This certainly sounds plausible, but who knows?
The event was not organized or sponsored by the library. The Simi Valley Republican Women, Federated — of which we can promise you Nancy is not a member — had hired the hall for a celebration of its 50th anniversary.
Palin’s gig at the Reagan library was a persistent thread in the cable chatter about her resignation as Alaska’s governor last month. It seemed to counterbalance a similar thread in which her parting shots at the media (“Stop makin’ stuff up.”) were compared with Richard Nixon’s retirement announcement in 1962 when he told reporters, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
(The parallels between Nixon and Palin end there, however. By 1962, Nixon had been a U.S. congressman, a senator, vice president for two terms and the GOP nominee for president. Palin’s career in politics so far has included a stint as a mayor of a town of 12,000, half of one term as a small-state governor and a stint as the GOP candidate for vice president.)
