The Sarah Palin Feud Watch

Updated 4/5/11 4:00 p.m. --

When has Gawker's Nick Denton ever had anything in common with former first lady Barbara Bush? Or director Oliver Stone with Senator Lisa Murkowski?

The answer: When Sarah Palin has feuded with them.

Palin has monetized micro-blog bomb-throwing. She attacks people via her one-way Internet communication -- the "lamestream" media reports it and she stays topical. It's catnip. It's a Real Housewives level of guilty pleasure voyeurism. She's tapped into our love of shamelessness. The more we reward her with attention, the more she keeps giving ... and giving.

To quantify this point, I've assembled a list of her media feuds since she was tapped to be veep. Call it a supplemental: A hyperlink to her hyper-sensitivity.

The list is made up of people and groups she has personally, by name, gone after in the press. Left out are people who criticize her and she ignores, like Meghan McCain. Those are rare. Also excluded are people who've only been harassed on her behalf, but not actually by her, like California State Senator Leland Yee. Plus, no dead people who can't defend themselves. Sorry, Shakespeare. What's left are people who have participated in a back and forth with Sarah Palin.

Some have observed the flames died down in the wake of Gabriele Giffords's attempted assassination; the national tragedy Palin strangely made about herself.

According to the (crowd sourced and obviously unscientific) list, even with a slow January her overall numbers are steady.

When I first compiled this list last November, Palin had been on the national scene for less than 30 months. There were over 60 entries. Palin's average? Two new tiffs a month. Every month.

In the last 90 days, by my count, she has waged seven new feuds (Julian Assange, Aaron Sorkin, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, TIME Magazine, Westboro Baptist Church and Michael Moore). That's still a solid two brawls each month, not counting any repeats, as with the president of the United States and his wife.

So, yes, for being a mavericky rogue, she's actually stalwartly consistent. Which is just what we look for in a president.

David Letterman
Wall Street Journal/Sudeep Reddy
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R)
Levi Johnston
Shannyn Moore
Katie Couric
Nicolle Wallace
Steve Schmidt
Kate Gosselin
The Fed/Ben Bernanke
Pete Rouse
Joe McGinniss
Peggy Noonan
Ashley Judd
Congressman Spencer Bachus (R)
Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten
Joe Miller
Politico
Karl Rove
State Department (Ahmadinejad's birthday)
Rahm Emanuel
Family Guy/Seth MacFarlane
Michelle Obama
President Barack Obama
Kathleen Gustafson
Brian Williams
Emily's List
Ed Gillespie
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Environmentalists
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)
Michael J. Gross
Vice President Al Gore
Charlie Gibson
Maureen Dowd
Bloggers
Rachel Maddow
60 Minutes
Mark Halperin
John Heilemann
Nick Denton/Gawker
Barbara Bush
U.S. Export Import Bank
Blogger Jesse Griffin
Blogger Dennis Zaki
Andrew Sullivan
Keith Olbermann
CSU students AKA "Dumpster Divers" Ashley Briggs and Alicia Lewis
Blogger Jeanne Devon
Palingates
Linda Kellen Biegel AKA Celtic Diva
Oliver Stone
John Bitney
Senator Scott Brown (R)
Alaska State Senate President Lyda Green
Andree McLeod
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
PolitiFact
Bill Ayers
Secretary Madeleine Albright
Sen. John Kerry (D)
Jonathan Martin
NPR
Rep. Alan Grayson (D)
Stephen Colbert
Helen Thomas
PETA
Anchorage Daily News
Tina Fey
Andrew Halcro
Kim Chatman
Julian Assange
Frank Gwartney
Aaron Sorkin
Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan
Charles Krauthammer
Rick Santorum
TIME Magazine
Westboro Baptist Church
Michael Moore
Blogger Taegan Goddard
Kathy Griffin
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
David Kernell
Daily Caller/Chris Moody
AOL

This list started as an overflow of names that couldn't fit into my fall column: America's Full-Time Professional Duelist. It was first published at The Atlantic on March 7, and will be updated as needed.

Know of a feud I missed? Send me an e-mail.

Image credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton.REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton.

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About the Author

Tina Dupuy is a syndicated op-ed columnist at Cagle Cartoons.

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With efforts to repeal Obamacare collapsing, the GOP faces a difficult landscape as it looks ahead to 2018.

Here’s an after-action report, as Congress prepares to recess:

The signature Republican domestic-policy demand of the past seven years is dead again. Deader than ever. Brought down by Republicans themselves, in the face of nearly unanimously hostile public opinion.

Democratic constituencies have been mobilized to an intensity not seen since the worst days of the Iraq war. They have crowded town halls and barraged senators with phone calls and messages. The party’s serious internal differences—including over the future of health care—have been laid aside for the time.

Republican constituencies have been split and demoralized. Working- and middle-class Republicans have been put on notice: Their party wanted to cut their Medicaid and other health-care benefits. Why should they show up in November to vote for more of that?

Upmarket Republicans have been formally informed: Their party was duping them on Obamacare repeal, in all those years of yammering, it never developed anything like an alternative. The Obamacare taxes will remain in place, as will the law’s other costs and burdens. Why should they show up in November to vote for more of that?

The White House is melting down in recrimination, rage, and failure. While opponents condemn Trump as authoritarian and corrupt, supporters in Congress and media want to talk about almost anything else: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, dirty rap lyrics—anything.

Donors are hearing that funds donated to the Republican National Committee and other party funds have been used to pay the personal legal bills of the supposedly super-rich Trump family—and that more such spending is probably on the way.

The special counsel’s investigation is triggering more and more erratic behavior from the president. Trump has repeatedly and publicly denounced his own attorney general—the one cabinet secretary executing a policy generally popular with the party’s conservative base, immigration enforcement. And this before the investigation has resulted in any legal consequences.

The president has achieved the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a chief executive at this point in his tenure, despite generally favorable economic news and the absence of any acute foreign-policy crisis.

The Democrats need take only 14 seats to flip the House. There are 7 Republican incumbents on the ballot in California, where the president’s approval rating has tumbled to 25 percent, down five points since Inauguration Day. There are 5 more in New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie’s approval rating has plunged to 15 percent.

The 2018 Senate map favors Republicans, but the president has gone out of his way to tie the single most imperiled Republican incumbent, Nevada’s Dean Heller, tightly to him and to the unpopular health-care bill. The president is waging open war against Arizona’s Jeff Flake—and his approval rating has sunk below 50 percent in states that might otherwise have been thought of as pickup opportunities, including Missouri and Michigan.