In a wide-ranging interview with FNC’s Eric Bolling yesterday, Governor Sarah Palin said that the Romney camp has been in touch regarding the convention, but that nothing is yet confirmed. She also said that she “just want[s] to help” and, like Newt Gingrich, is comfortable with the idea of “speaking or not.”
The video is below. This excerpt starts at 3:20:
Sometimes helping means you step aside and certainly you don’t invite yourself into a leadership or speakership type role at a convention like this. You try to work with the strategy the campaign has in place, and evidently Romney’s campaign has a strategy that they will implement. And whether I’m there or not as a speaker, I’m comfortable either way just like Newt Gingrich said he was comfortable either way — speaking or not.
Palin also made clear that she and Governor Romney have a good relationship:
Speaking personally, there is no hatchet to bury or olive branch that needs to be passed between Mitt Romney and myself. We have a good relationship and I have great respect for him and I am so thankful the GOP has a strong candidate who understands the private sector and what it takes to get the economy roaring again.
This is gracious of the Governor, but I personally think Romney would be insane not to give the biggest and most effective star in the conservative movement the best speaking slot he possibly can.
Like 2010, 2012 is going to be a turn out/base election and no one turns us conservatives out like Sarah Palin.
Also of note in the interview is what the Governor had to say about the corrupt media:
I and others warned GOP strategists and GOP candidates that no matter who that GOP nominee would be coming out of our primary process, they would have to run against — not just President Obama and his billion dollar campaign war chest … this nominee of ours would have to run against the lapdogs in the mainstream media and the yellow journalism they practice. ….
The irony I think is that so many in the GOP establishment sat back on the sidelines — they were just kind of sucking it all in when this was happening to other people in the party in the last four years. Now they’re getting a taste of it and they’re realizing what it is we’ve been warning them about.
The media attacking Palin and her family is just evil being evil. I will, however, never forgive those in the Republican Party who stood on the sidelines as this was happening. And the ones who joined in can go straight to hell.
Deep breath.
Okay, to Palin’s point about the media’s behavior towards Mitt Romney, she’s exactly right. All those wobbly Republicans who think the media can be appeased by a more moderate candidate or moderate positions are being proved wrong this very day. The media’s in full-throated destroy mode against this Massachusetts Moderate, just as they would have been had we nominated someone more conservative.
To Romney’s great credit, he understand this and isn’t jumping into media traps as we saw McCain do time and again in 2008.
But when I hear my fellow Republicans affirm a media narrative about Romney’s taxes or how he handled the press corps during his overseas trip, that’s the same old dangerous ignorance at play that foolishly assumes that surrendering to narratives is a way to appease the media when, in fact, that surrender is really a trap.
Nothing will ever placate the media. Romney could’ve answered a gajillion questions asked by the crybaby press corps, and they still would’ve manufactured whatever they had to in order to declare his overseas venture a failure. Romney could release every tax return he’s filed since birth, and the media would still manufacture a way to paint his as shady and dishonest.
The polls show that Romney is doing just fine. He’s keeping Obama under 50, well under 50, and has 97 days to roll out the ideas that will show voters he’s the acceptable alternative to this complete failure of a president. Romney can also start to finally spend all this money he’s been precluded from spending until the convention — which is only 25 days away.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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