The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XXXIV: Pulling Out Of Michigan

Here we go again. Yesterday, Sarah Palin said the following to Oprah Winfrey on the air:

WINFREY: Didn’t several times they say to you when actually you mentioned, when you were talking about pulling out of Michigan and you said I wished we’d stayed in Michigan. Weren’t you told then, Sarah just stay on script?

PALIN: Right, told after wards and that, that was always puzzling to me because if I were to respond to a reporter’s questions very candidly, honestly, for instance, they say, “what do you think about the campaign pulling out of Michigan” and I think, “darn I wish we weren’t. Every vote matters, I can’t wait to get back to Michigan” and then told afterwards that, “oh, you screwed up. You went rogue on us Sarah, you’re not supposed to be.” And my reminder to the campaign was, I didn’t know we pulled out of Michigan. My entire VP team, we didn’t know that we had pulled out. I’m sorry, I apologize, but speaking candidly to a reporter.

This was a lie. And we know it was a lie the way we know that 33 other statements by Palin are lies - because objective reality proves it so. On October 3, as Matt Corley explains, Palin told Carl Cameron that she disagreed with the decision to pull out of Michigan. How can she have disagreed with something that she now says she didn't know at the time? Here's the money section of the Cameron interview:

CAMERON: Thanks very much, Governor. I'm going get the hook. I have one quick political question for you that if I don't ask you, I would be (INAUDIBLE).

Yesterday, just before the debate it was announced that the campaign was going to withdraw some of its exercises in Michigan, essentially leave Michigan for Obama to win. What's going on there?

PALIN: Well, that's not a surprise because the polls are showing we're not doing as well there, evidently, as we would like to. But, I (INAUDIBLE) up this morning, also. I fired a quick e-mail and said, oh, come on. Do we have to call it there? Todd and I would happy to get to Michigan and walk through those plants where car manufacturers [sic].

We'd be so happy to get to speak with the people there in Michigan, who are hurting because the economy is hurting. Whatever we can do and whatever Todd and I can do in realizing what their challenges in that state are, as we can relate to them and connect with them and promise them that we won't let them down in the administration. I want to get
back to Michigan and I want to try.

And then the smoking gun, via Walshe and Conroy:

The e-mail that Palin sent was, in fact, essentially how she described it to Cameron. She wrote to her traveling staff and top McCain advisers, “If there’s any time, Todd and I would love a quick return to Michigan-we’d tour the plants, etc. . . . If it does McC any good. I know you have a plan, but I hate to see us leave Michigan. We’ll do whatever we had [sic] to do there to give it a 2nd effort.”

A senior aide replied, “Michigan is out of reach unless something drastic happens. We must win oh and hopefully pa.”

Palin replied that she “got it,” but her subsequent interview with Cameron had shown that she hadn’t. She acknowledged as much in a post-interview e-mail to senior staff, writing, “Oops-I mentioned something about that to Carl Cameron and it’s now recorded that I’d love to give Michigan the ol’ college try.”

So she wants both to insist that she was a team-player and to insist that she was going rogue. Only in Sarah Palin's mind can those two realities be simultaneously true.

So here's a challenge for the MSM. Who will be the first interviewer to ask Palin why she lied twice to Oprah's face?