Last week, the conservative punditry lit up, discussed a brief series of rumors that popped up saying that Sarah Palin might be considering a run at the Talk Radio business.<\/p>\n
There are some ups and downs to the idea (which, let’s be clear, is still only a rumor; further rumors claim that Clear Channel, which broadcasts Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity,\u00a0has taken a pass on a\u00a0syndicated Palin show).\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think there are ten better plans out there for Sarah Palin (and am discussing them right now, 1:15PM Central Time, on the Northern Alliance Radio Network<\/a>):\u00a0<\/p>\n 10. Run for Senator from Alaska.\u00a0 This is a bit of a gamble, in that it would traditionally imply that she’s giving up on 2012.\u00a0 It’d be especially important for Palin; she’s already left one office early.\u00a0 2012 is going to be a challenging time to run as a Republican – but as with all challenges, there are opportunities.\u00a0 Does Palin run against an incumbent whose numbers are down now<\/em>, but who could well bounce back big by 2012 (remember Reagan’s polling, which was dismal in 1982 but bounced back to landslide levels in 1984?), or wait until the nation is really <\/em>ready for a change?\u00a0 It’s a tough call.\u00a0 That’s why it’s #10.<\/p>\n 9. Start a blog.\u00a0 She should be doing this anyway; if there’s a conservative pol out there who has the capacity to outflank the media the way Reagan did, it’s Sarah Palin.\u00a0 If blogs had existed in 1980, I suspect Reagan would have had a great one.<\/p>\n 8. Do a collection of frank, to the point Youtubes.\u00a0 The model for this would be Milton Friedman’s classic 1979 PBS series “Free To Choose”, which sold conservatism and economic liberty\u00a0to many of the unconverted (which means PBS will never ever let that happen again – hence Youtube).\u00a0 Cover the big Palin issues – growth, liberty, prosperity – on her own terms, in her own way, playing to her strengths.\u00a0 Quit relying on the mainstream media to do anything other than be in the bag for her opposition.<\/p>\n 7. Talk Radio – Oh, what the heck.\u00a0 But she should not <\/em>do a three-hour-a-day show, like Limbaugh or Beck.\u00a0 She should shoot for a one-hour <\/em>daily show, or maybe a two hour weekend show.\u00a0\u00a0 Making fifteen compelling hours of radio a week\u00a0 – easy as the good ones make it sound – is a lot of hard work.\u00a0 It takes commitment – and Palin needs to commit to a higher calling than earning ratings.\u00a0 But a one-hour daily, or two-hour weekend show is ideal for getting specific, focused messages out there, and taking just the right<\/em> amount of positive and negative feedback from callers.\u00a0 Each hour could be a major event in its own right.\u00a0 And doing an hour of radio, especially with a solid support staff, is not <\/em>that difficult.\u00a0 Especially if Palin had a good sidekick.\u00a0 Especially a sidekick with impeccable conservative credentials and lots of experience working with radio neophytes<\/a>.\u00a0 Ahem.<\/p>\n 6. Get that book done.\u00a0 Make sure it’s a doozy – as in, “less autobiography, more challenge to today’s status quo<\/em>“.\u00a0 Of course, some autobio<\/p>\n 5. Big honkin’ speaking tour.\u00a0 She showed during the campaign that she can work a room as well as anyone, and better than most.\u00a0 She also showed, I think, that she needed to top the marquee; speaking in support of John McCain was like bailing in support of the Titanic, especially given the number of Mac’s staff that were actively sabotaging her.\u00a0 Let her do the tour as the A-list, and let her – no, make <\/em>her fail or, ideally, succeed on her own terms.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Do what Reagan did; hundreds and hundreds of small speaking and commentary engagements.\u00a0 Reagan’s gig as General Electric’s PR face\u00a0was not only great exposure, but great training\u00a0<\/p>\n 3. Sunday morning talk show.\u00a0 Talk with Fox; nobody’ll be surprised that it’s a bald-faced showcase (because that’s what it needs <\/em>to be), and one hour a week of mixing it up with the punditry can only be great training.<\/p>\n 2. “The Opportunity Tour”.\u00a0 Yes, it’s a takeoff on Robert Kennedy’s “Poverty Tour” (and Paul Wellstone’s cheap 1999 copy) – but the opposite way.\u00a0 Where RFK (and PW’s) versions were tours of American failure, Sarah Palin’s tour would be a parade of seeming failures that are actual opportunities for the free market, for liberty, for the American way, <\/em>by way of contrasting Palin (and conservatism) with the dismal reality of Obama’s lumpen socialism-lite.<\/p>\n 1. Anything but<\/em> announce her candidacy!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, the conservative punditry lit up, discussed a brief series of rumors that popped up saying that Sarah Palin might be considering a run at the Talk Radio business. There are some ups and downs to the idea (which, let’s be clear, is still only a rumor; further rumors claim that Clear Channel, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-talk-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}