I have never really understood the Religious Right’s love of Sarah Palin, especially in light of the fact that she repeatedly stiffs them.
Within days of bursting onto the national scene as John McCain’s running mate, Palin backed out of her scheduled appearance at the Republican National Coalition for Life’s reception during the Republican National Convention, a move that enraged event organizer Phyllis Schlafly.
While Palin’s need to back out of that particular event could be justified by the fact that, having suddenly become a vice presidential nominee, she obviously had bigger priorities than attending Schalfly’s luncheon, in retrospect it turns out that it was actually just the first in a long series of such snubs.
As the Anchorage Daily News reports, Palin has now done it again:
Organizers of an Anchorage event that has been billing Sarah Palin for weeks as a star speaker were left scrambling Wednesday after learning that the former governor won’t be there for tonight’s event and claims to have never been asked.
It would be at least the fourth time in recent months that an anticipated Palin speech has fallen through after Palin and her camp disputed they had ever confirmed it. That includes the brouhaha over whether she’d speak at the annual congressional Republican fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C., this summer.
This time it’s an event promoting an Alaska ballot measure aimed at making it illegal for teens to get an abortion without telling their parents. The Alaska Family Council has been advertising that Palin would give a speech and become the first official signer of the ballot petition tonight at ChangePoint, the Anchorage megachurch.
Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said Wednesday, in response to inquiries from the Daily News about tonight’s event, that “this is the first we have ever heard of a speech.” She said Palin is out of state and won’t be there.
Stapleton declined to provide details on where Palin is and what she is doing.
Alaska Family Council President Jim Minnery said it was news to him when a reporter told him that Stapleton was saying Palin had no knowledge of the speech, which his group has been promoting. He said organizers have been talking to Palin “contacts” for weeks about it.
“All we can do is take people at their word that we’ve worked with in the past,” Minnery said. “We’ve been working for several weeks on the event, promoting it very heavily. It would be a grave disappointment if she doesn’t show up but the show will still go on.”
I know we probably shouldn’t expect much for a governor who can’t even bother to finish her one-term in office, but Palin’s seeming inability to honor even her most basic commitments is truly laughable.
