Responding to Rove, Palin says appearing on Fox is “just preaching to the choir”
Written by Ned Resnikoff
Published
The ongoing spitball fight between Team Rove and Team Palin resurfaced on tonight's episode of Hannity. Near the end of a fawning interview that spanned the length of the entire episode, Sean Hannity asked Palin about about Rove's continued criticism of her reality TV show. In response, Palin said that Rove “needs to understand that pop culture is the influencer in this country” and that conservatives shouldn't “just preach to the choir with Fox viewers”:
PALIN: There is no feud, at least not on my part. I don't have any desire to be threatening to anybody in that political machine. I don't desire to take anybody's title, or their position, or their power base, or anything else. I just want to be part of the team, if the team is out there fighting for the right things for this country. And partnering with Karl Rove, you know, I'm all for that, if he understands where it is I'm coming from.
And where it is I'm coming from, when I talk about some interjection of my life into pop culture, he needs to understand that pop culture is the influencer in this country in our society. So we are to be salt and light. We're not to just be sitting there in our own little circle of influence and though the Fox News viewership is huge, larger than any other news organization of course, just preaching to the choir with Fox viewers? No, we need to get out there and reach people who are so independent that perhaps they would never think to tune in to Fox News and introduce some good ideas to these people. We can do that through a show like Sarah Palin's Alaska.
Not only did Palin imply that Rove is out of touch with independent voters, but so is Fox News. According to Palin, sticking to appearances on Fox News is “just preaching to the choir.” It was a telling admission, and Hannity didn't question it.
But we shouldn't be too surprised that Palin, in her efforts to knock down Rove, would throw even her own in-house PR firm under the bus. After all, what the last five minutes of the interview all came down to was her war against the “establishment” embodied by the veteran political operative who criticized her campaigning skills on her own network. Anti-establishment Palin is the theme she returned to as the interview wound to a close:
HANNITY: Alright, I've got to ask you-- I've got to go back to where we started the interview. And you did say you are contemplating a run for the presidency. My next question is: When will you decide?
PALIN: You know, that's a good question. I still don't know on timing. What I will not do though is do the conventional bigwig politician way of doing it, with having teams of highly paid consultants who want to shape a campaign and a candidate into something that perhaps that person really isn't. I'm not gonna go that route and have them tell me what to do. I'll know that I know that I know that I know when it is time to make the decision.