Mitt Romney talks about the economy, tea parties and the future of the Republican party

A few minutes before Mitt Romney spoke to conservative donors at a dinner hosted by the Young America's Foundation conference in Santa Barbara this month, he made a surprise appearance before a roomful of student attendees who had been squeezed out of the dinner due to lack of space.

"Hey, everybody!" he said. "Ho! Ho!"

The 200 or so young conservatives cheered. "You are a good American!" one young man shouted.

For a few minutes, the former Massachusetts governor bantered with the crowd with the ease of a stand-up comedian. He fielded questions about the economy -- "It will get better"  -- and the 2012 presidential election.

"Are you running?" someone asked.

Romney laughed. "I'm running up the stairs," he said.

Romney, who sought the Republican presidential nomination last year and lost to Arizona Sen. John McCain, is widely seen as a front runner in the race for the 2012 nomination. Although he hasn't announced his intentions, he spoke like a candidate at the conference, seeming eager to impress the deep-pocketed donors in attendance.

The Young America's Foundation aims to groom high school and college students to be future leaders by exposing them to the conservative philosophies that organizers say are missing from many classrooms. Last weekend's conference brought nearly 300 high school and college students to the Reagan Ranch Center, where the foundation is based, for a series of lectures.

A website tracking potential candidates for the 2012 presidential election reports that...

Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue': A powerful testament to a good woman's endurance in a mean world of politics

"Reviewing" Sarah Palin's new book is quite an assignment. There are a lot of pages. And not many pictures. But here goes:

Despite the involvement of a professional ghostwriter, Republican ex-Gov. Palin has penned one of the most powerful pieces of personal or political literature in a generation of American books. It's "Going Rogue: An American Life" (HarperCollins, $28.99).

Her behind-the-scenes memoir -- you may have noticed a photo of the cover above -- is flying off store shelves across the country even as you read this. (Now, see video below.)

It's a 413-page masterwork of personal and political insight that makes Dick Cheney's upcoming memoir look like a Golden Book. Based on the first 48 hours of....

... sales reports, HarperCollins has already ordered additional printings. And Palin is destined to become a millionaire. Again.

With her trademark down-to-earth tone and gee-gollys, Palin takes her readers inside a compelling personal quest from her loving family's upbringing through the....

Sarah Palin was not on Oprah's Tuesday show after all

So there we were in our slippers, sweatshirt and jeans, wide awake all perky-like, notebook at the ready, prepared to take down most every revealing word that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was going to tell Oprah on her TV show Tuesday.

There had been so very much hype about the Republican pitbull from Alaska finally confronting the most famous backer of Democrat Barack Obama on national television for a thoughtful, woman-to-woman discussion of her new book, what it meant for the future of American politics and what it was really like as a female wearing lipstick inside the doomed McCain presidential campaign run by a bunch of chain-smoking white guys.

First of all, we noticed Oprah's guest had ditched those famous modish eyeglasses. Her hair was blonde this year. But these things can change often with women and professional wrestlers.

Oprah's guest clearly rejected the idea of wearing a confining pantsuit in public. Her short skirt went right up there around Nebraska. The hair hung down to the Dakotas. And Oprah's questioning seemed a little off-target too for a political interview.

The two women got along well, though. Then, they hit on some puzzlingly explicit topics that you don't normally hear much of in interviews of unindicted politicians.

The guest had written a book a while back called "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star," which wasn't exactly the title we had expected based on the advance publicity for the former Republican VP candidate.

The guest said women are actually her biggest fans and come up to her all the time, saying things like, "Thank you so much. You taught me how to give my husband _______.  And he really loves it."

Well, as you may have guessed by now, it turns out that Oprah's guest Tuesday wasn't Sarah Palin after all. Sarah Palin was on Monday, as the week's warmup guest for some actress named Jenna Jameson, whom, quite frankly, Hon, we had never heard of, being as totally focused on politics as we are all day every day.

Apparently Jameson has made more than 100 movies of one kind or another, mostly another. And most of them with her ex-husband which, she said, was somehow safer and allowed the love to show through.

So it sounds like she made those romantic chick flicks.

But, between us, Jameson can't have been too successful financially because the actress could only afford to buy a dress with one shoulder for the show.

The two women had a long conversation and went on about the sex industry for some reason. Oprah posted more details on the show on her website here.

Of course, we had to watch the whole thing just in case Palin popped out from behind the curtain or something. You never know, you know. And politics bloggers can't ever miss any interesting human detail. Alas, Palin never appeared on Tuesday.

So we had to just sit there, wasting an entire hour, watching this tall, blonde Jameson person cross and recross her long legs and flip that mass of hair. (If it's so annoying, why not put a rubber band or something on it?)

Anyway, the whole thing got kinda old and boring, as any wife must imagine, and we forgot to take notes.

Maybe Oprah will have Palin back on some other day. We'll keep you posted.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Harpo Productions

Sarah Palin lets slip a little secret about hubby Todd

Well, thanks a lot, Rush Limbaugh.

A whole half-hour on national radio with Sarah Palin on the air, millions of people listening in their cars and kitchens, and not one word about Lucky Johnston or whatever-his-name is. Nothing about the great RNC Clothes Caper. Nothing about whether the mother of five gave birth control instructions to her daughter.

So what was the point? And he calls himself a journalist.

Well, no he doesn't. But anyway, as The Ticket reported here Tuesday morning, El Rushbo did pursue numerous substantive policy areas with the former Republican governor who hits the road today on her book bus in Michigan and beyond, selling "Going Rogue." The book began flying off the shelves officially yesterday but has been unofficially available at some rogue places since late last week. (See video)

Nothing better than the gloomy, grey skies of Michigan in November. But Palin just had to....

...go there. Remember, the McCain brain trust, knowing it was losing well before election day last fall, was trying to target its more limited resources where they might actually work. And the numbers told them that Michigan was not one of those places. (Hmm, what if they'd picked Michigan native son Mitt Romney as VP?)

And Palin, being who she is and so naive and so inexperienced in the business of losing....

Palin to Biden: 'Drill, baby, drill' not that complicated

(UPDATE: 1:28 p.m. An additional quote from the program and a link to the full transcript has been added below.)

Rush Limbaugh has said of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue," that it is "truly one of the most substantive policy books I've read."

So the conservative icon was determined not to follow the media herd. In a half-hour interview with the Republican Party's hottest commodity, Limbaugh did not ask Palin about her quarrels with John McCain's presidential campaign, her interview with CBS' Katie Couric, her clothes, her husband or her ambitions.

Instead, he offered her a platform for policy, a chance to burnish her credentials, to add gravitas to the resume.

On the green revolution: "A lot of snake-oil science. ... Somebody's making an awful lot of money" from the fear of global warming.

On healthcare: "There are lots of common-sense solutions before we get the federal government involved."

And, finally, on the "drill, baby, drill" chant that defined her appearance before the Republican National Convention last summer: "What is complicated about tapping into safe supplies" of oil?

Responding to Vice President Biden's recent comment that addressing environmental issues is more complicated then just drilling, Palin said, "It's not that complicated, it's political."

(UPDATE: The full Limbaugh-Palin transcript is now available here. He also asked Palin about the loss of her endorsed Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, in New York's 23d District:

Well, I think what you saw there is -- and of course it's not just the Republican machine, it's the Democrat machine, too.  You know, if you're not the anointed one within the machine, sometimes you have a much tougher row to hoe and that's what Hoffman faced. He was the underdog. 

I think great timing for him, though, to stand strong on his conservative credentials and essentially come out of nowhere and prove that an American without that resume, without that machine backing can truly make a difference in an election like this.

RUSH:  Well, now, you used the term, "If you're not the anointed one by the party machine, you're the underdog and you have a tough row to hoe."  Based on things that I read, the Republican establishment would not anoint you to be a nominee of their party should you choose to go that way. 

Palin, who upset the entrenched GOP establishment in Alaska to win the gubernatorial primary, chuckled.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Palin's book sparks attack on vegetarians

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has never made any bones, if you will, about her culinary preferences. She's a carnivore, a hunter and proud of both.

So it's not really a surprise that her book, "Going Rogue," published today, extols the virtues of eating meat.

"If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore," she wrote. "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?”

But the former Republican vice presidential candidate did not stop there.

“I love meat," she writes. "I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak. But I especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals -- right next to the mashed potatoes.”

A vegetarian from Cleveland took issue with Palin. In a blog on the Examiner, Daelyn Fourtney wrote that Palin's remarks "will surely receive a chuckle and thumbs up from many avid hunters and steak house patrons. It is a sad statement on our society when we applaud those who refer to animals as the centerpiece of their dinner plate."

Now, Fourtney is reporting that she has received a lot of hostile e-mails from conservatives assuming her to be a left-wing pinko. A sampling of her inbox:

* “The liberal/socialist media elites are terrified of America's new Reagan and it's so much fun to see their PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome) on display...including this Fortney writer.” –freeperjim

“Politicizing Food now?...is nothing sacred? ... off, Alinksy Vegan Radicals.” – Tyler

“You liberals and militant vegs. apparently need a humor transplant.” –Keith

The Cleveland food writer -- in some quarters now known as the "Rogue Vegetarian" -- said her politics are separate from her eating habits.

"I have chosen to live a vegetarian lifestyle because I believe in the sanctity of life for all creatures," she said. "Assuming that one is left or right based on what they choose to eat is a dangerous road to travel."

Still, she said, she's not counting on a Christmas card from the Republican Party this year.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Sarah Palin with a caribou she shot in Alaska. Credit: Associated Press

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Going berserk over 'Going Rogue;' Democrats' reaction to Sarah Palin book and publicity

Wow, for somebody who's supposed to be such a political joke, an Arctic ditz and eminently dismissable as a serious anything except maybe a stay-at-home hockey mom, Sarah Palin is sure drawing an awful lot of attention from Democrats and eager critics.

The launch of her "Going Rogue" interviews Monday on "Oprah," of her book today, of her on-air chat today with Rush Limbaugh at 10 a.m. Pacific and of her mid-America bus book tour Wednesday ignited a surprisingly large blizzard of derogatory Democrat dis-missives.

Every few minutes another note from Democratic National Committee operatives and others dropped into electronic mailboxes across the media-verse, helpfully passing on even the tiniest tidbit of negative news about Palin.

You know how sometimes a friend tells you how much he/she doesn't really care about....

What Sarah Palin had in common with that TV show 'The Prisoner'

A presidential campaign can be a disorienting thing, especially for a novice like Sarah Palin, who was plucked from the Alaska governor’s mansion and tossed onto the national stage with very little seasoning and preparation. The pressures on her were immense, as she recounts in "Going Rogue: An American Life.”

In fact, it occurred to us as we were reading the book today that in some ways, her version of the campaign can be likened to the great 1960s British TV show “The Prisoner” (which has just been remade for American TV).

In “The Prisoner,” a man called No. 6, played by Patrick Mcgoohan (photo above), is trapped in “The Village” and has no idea why he is there or where he is. Under constant surveillance, each time he tries to escape, he is subsumed by a giant white ball and returned to his cottage.

Palin recounts in her book that she didn’t understand the rules of the campaign but was expected to follow them. She was constantly told by high-level campaign staffers that someplace called “headquarters” was overruling her or issuing commands about what she could and could not do.

Headquarters’ wishes were relayed to her by McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt and campaign spokeswoman Nicole Wallace.

“The Schmidt-Wallace tag team,” she writes, “would continually invoke the all-powerful ‘headquarters,’ a mysterious, faraway entity whose exact identity and location were never fully explained.

By the end of the campaign, my VP teammates and I would look at each other and say, ‘Who is headquarters?’” Toward the end of the campaign, Palin and her staff used air quotes when they uttered the h-word.

“I had visited the physical headquarters once in Washington, D.C., and met amazing volunteers working round the clock for the GOP ticket,” she writes. “But somehow I must never have met the tight inner circle of shot callers."

At one point, during preparation for her debate with Democratic VP nominee, Joe Biden, Schmidt and McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis sat her down. “Suddenly, I felt I like I was on thin ice.”

“Schmidt leveled his eyes at me. ‘We don’t have the money Obama does and the numbers don’t look good. We’ve got to change things up….So headquarters is flying in a nutritionist.”

Palin writes that she thought that was a splendid idea for Schmidt and his fellow staffers, whose “chain-smoking, junk-food-packing, recirculated-air-breathing habits were probably catching up to them.”

“No, it’s for you,” Schmidt told her. “You’ve got to get off the Atkins diet.” 

Only one problem: She wasn't on the Atkins diet, she writes.

“I’m a forty-four-year-old, healthy, athletic woman raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought as his words faded into a background buzz. Sir, I don’t really know you yet. But you’ve told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people NOT to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be, and we’re STILL losing. Now you’re going to tell me what to eat?

“I suppose if headquarters had flown in a nutritionist, I would’ve listened to what he or she had to say. But as with much of what headquarters said, it never happened.”

--Robin Abcarian

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Oprah's Sarah Palin interview incites 'perky' reactions

Sarah Palin's rogue book tour made a pre-taped stop in Chicago today for the former Alaska governor's much-hyped appearance on "Oprah."

Palin dropped some doggone fascinating tidbits during the interview. She said she has no plans to run for president in 2012. Well, actually she said it's "not on my radar," which is Politician for "It might be over the horizon."

That might ease the worries of conspiracy theorists convinced that the adorable political celebrity could ring in the 2012 apocalypse. On second thought, no, it won't convince the "anti-" crowd of anything.

Oprah Winfrey, who supported her hometown senator, Barack Obama, in the election, questioned Palin about her unintentionally hilarious interviews with Katie Couric. Palin refused to refer to Couric by name, instead calling her "the perky one." Gosh!

Don't worry, plenty more to come after the book's official release tomorrow. There's a five-part Barbara Walters chat on ABC and a long radio conversation with Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern.

As entertaining as the Oprah chat was, we also like to watch the comments from fans and haters. Did Oprah go too easy on Palin? Some said, You betcha. But others admitted that Palin is starting to grow on them.

We grabbed some of the best we found on Twitter. Here they are (unedited):

Sarah Palin's steamy passage about husband Todd, plus surprisingly kind words about Hillary Clinton

It's not the typical kind of passage for a political memoir. But hey, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Pallin isn't the typical kind of politician.

Amid rumors that Palin and her husband Todd, known as Alaska's "First Dude," were getting a divorce, the governor recounts this moment in her odyssey. If it reads like a Harlequin novel, viewer discretion advised.

“That day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirtless, take the baby from my arms and walk him back to the ranch house so Trig could nap while I made calls,” she writes in "Going Rogue," the much-publicized memoir out Tuesday. "Seeing Todd’s blue eyes smiling, I chuckled. ‘Dang,’ I thought. ‘Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?’”

Palin's book, "Going Rogue," is being released Tuesday with a huge publicity drum roll -- beginning with today's interview with Oprah Winfrey  -- and considerable speculation about whether the publicity will help Palin resurrect her political career.

In the meantime, various quotations are leaking out. One of the most intriguing is the Republican vice presidential candidate's view of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then battling Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.

From the book: "Should Secretary Clinton and I ever sit down over a cup of coffee, I know that we will fundamentally disagree on many issues, but my hat is off to her hard work on the 2008 campaign trail. …[A] lot of her supporters think she proved what Margaret Thatcher proclaimed: 'If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.' "

Here's Clinton's response.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: Gatty Images

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