Sarah Palin's bumpy post-election road continues.
In her home state, the governor is in the embarrassing position of facing a possible override of her veto of $28.6 million in federal stimulus dollars for energy relief (itself a small fraction of the funds she had earlier promised to refuse). Though the override would require a 75 percent vote of the Legislature in joint session, it looks as though the numbers are there. "I would be surprised if we didn't override her," Republican Rep. John Coghill told the Alaska Daily News last week. Republican Rep. Mike Hawker seconded him: "We could have one of those rare and difficult instances where we are actually able to override a governor's veto of an appropriation item."
Why? State Democrats unsurprisingly oppose Palin, but Republicans, too, have been hard-pressed to find the "strings" Palin claimed were attached to the funds:
“This issue has been researched thoroughly by legislative staff and we couldn’t find one string attached to those funds,” said Anchorage Republican Rep. Charisse Millett....
And from yet another Alaska Republican, Anchorage Senator Lesil McGuire: “When we researched the facts on it, the strings that were discussed were not there.”
Meanwhile, Palin's prickly relationship with GOP's Washington establishment has continued apace. Alaska blogger Mudflats summarizes the history...
First Palin says she can’t speak at the GOP winter retreat because she’s got homework in Alaska, and then shows up that same night at the Alfalfa Club Dinner across town in D.C. Then she commits to speak at the CPAC convention, confirms, and then cancels. Now, she’s all set to deliver the keynote address on June 8 at the Republican Senate-House dinner, it gets announced to the press, and published in all the papers and blogs, and over the airwaves, and then. Ohhhhhh! Lucy pulls the football! Again.
...before relaying the latest twist from Politico:
After being invited --for a second time-- to speak to the annual joint fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Palin was told abruptly Saturday night that she would not be allowed to address the thousands of Republicans there after all.
The Alaska governor may now skip the dinner altogether, and her allies are miffed at what they see as a slight from the congressional wing of the Republican Party.
The reason given for the snub, said a Palin aide, was that NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions was concerned about not wanting to upstage former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the fundraising gala’s keynote speaker.
On the upside, at least no one's speculating that there may be any friction due to Palin's liberal borrowing of Gingrich's words in an introduction for Michael Reagan last week. Oh, wait...
--Christopher Orr