Is Sarah Palin Throwing Candidates Under Her Bus?

Sarah is travelling the country on her “One Nation” bus tour. She isn’t talking about the candidates or even whether or not she’ll be a candidate. She is talking about the issues and American history. So exactly what is Sarah Palin doing?

As her patriotically-decorated convoy hit New Hampshire the same day as Mitt Romney’s announcement, a possible strategy for the cross-country tour emerged. Local papers had Sarah’s attendance of a clam bake on the front page and Romney’s presidential announcement was pushed to page three. Sarah also slammed Romney on his views on government-controlled healthcare just moments before Romney was scheduled to make his campaign announcement:

In my opinion any mandate coming from government is not a good thing,even on a state level and even a local level, mandates coming from a governing body, it’s tough for a lot of us independent Americans to accept, because we have great faith in the private sectors and our own families, and our own businessmen and women making decisions for ourselves.

Sarah closed her commentary on Mitt by telling the press group that Romney has a long way to go if he thinks he can bring in the Conservative vote.

Sarah has never hidden her Conservative beliefs nor her disdain for the establishment candidates. Maybe Sarah’s use of a bus is more symbolic that most first thought. Could she be throwing centrist candidates under the “One Nation” bus?

Romney isn’t the first establishment candidate to have One Nation tire tracks on his back. In May, Palin criticized Newt Gingrich for bowing to the media after he had referred to Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “right-wing social engineering”.

If Newt Gingrich believes that it’s right-wing social engineering to undo Obamacare and reform Medicare … then say so. But don’t apologize later just because the media has dinged you on what you said.

Sarah has the attention of the main-stream media and she doesn’t even have to go begging for it. Actually, she doesn’t have to even let them know where she’s going. Her tour has not been furnishing an itinerary to the press, yet her activities are top news at outlets left-wing, main-stream, and right-of-center alike. With that kind of publicity and drawing power comes influence. Electoral influence.

The establishment candidates know that they will struggle to take primaries in states where the Tea Parties are strong and well-organized. Sarah turns those grass-roots messages into the news of the day.