Looks like we’ve got a Republican etiquette concern on our hands, folks. Even after what seems like a centuries-long career of tossing meaningless word salad live on cable news, Alaska governor possible Presidential candidate rural mayor victor in the battle to overturn the Affordable Care Act hockey mom yammering pundit Sarah Palin is still awaiting her invitation to the 2012 Republican National Convention from the Romney camp. Tea Party supporters are hopping mad. What’s this feeling? Oh, yeah. Palinfreude.
Although her speech at the 2008 convention was pretty much the pinnacle of her political career, Palin should have expected her reception from the mainstream GOP to be chilly — she’s worked hard at alienating just about everyone in America, even people who should have been her allies. You can’t maverick around for years without pissing the establishment off. NewsBeast’s Peter J. Boyer notes that hours after Mittens Romney announced that he was running for President, Sarah Palin’s probably-non-fuel efficient bus rolled into town for a stop on her cross country Sarah Palin Awareness Tour, the equivalent of a blasted Lee Greenwood or some other such deliberately emotionally manipulative patriot music interrupting what Romney hoped was a Historical Speech. She distracted public attention from actual GOP Presidential candidates by pretending like she was considering possibly running for office months into the primary season. She’s declared that she could beat Mitt Romney, and hesitated to extend him an endorsement after he won the party’s nomination. To expect Mitt Romney to welcome Sarah Palin to the GOP convention with open arms after months of shitting all over everything would be somewhere between naive and obtuse.