Palin gone, anything but forgotten

U.S. Republican vice- presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waves to the crowd after U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) delivered his concession speech in Phoenix, November 4, 2008. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA) less U.S. Republican vice- presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waves to the crowd after U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) delivered his concession speech in Phoenix, November ... more Photo: Mike Blake, Reuters Photo: Mike Blake, Reuters Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Palin gone, anything but forgotten 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin returned home in defeat to Wasilla, Alaska, on Wednesday night - leaving behind eyebrow-raising tales about towel-clad appearances and internal campaign feuds.

Palin had barely touched down when conservative Web sites began hawking defiant bumper stickers: "I'll keep my guns, freedom and money. You can keep 'The Change': Palin 2012." It's 1,460 days until the next election, and loyal Palinmaniacs have already kicked off the palin4pres2012.com Web site and mailing list.

Emerging from her plane, Palin was met with chants of "2012! 2012!" She left herself a very big open door when asked about her plans in four years.

"We'll see what happens then," she told reporters.

But even as she hedged, stories emerged this week that threatened to collapse Palin's carefully cultivated pit bull-with-lipstick, moose-hunter, hockey-mom, maverick image.

Among the stories reported by Fox News and Newsweek magazine:

-- She showed up in front of John McCain campaign aides "wearing nothing but a towel."

-- She sent campaign staff on a shopping spree for her family that insiders described as the "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast."

-- She was so shockingly ignorant of basic geography that aides prepping her for her single debate realized she didn't know that Africa is a continent and not a country, nor could she identify the countries that comprise North America.

Palin released a statement calling the accusations "so unfortunate and, quite honestly, sickening. ... The accusations we are reading are not true."

Conservative icon and author Richard Viguerie, who heads conservativehq.com - and who has called Palin "the new Ronald Reagan" - dismissed the reports Thursday and defended Palin as a figure who will continue to have enormous clout with conservatives.

"Almost the entire leadership of the McCain campaign was Washington insiders, lobbyists ... and they come from a very different background than Sarah Palin," he said. "She became a hero ... and a rising star in this campaign," a status he said is likely to continue as conservatives aim to reshape and remarket their brand in the wake of the 2008 election landslide for Barack Obama.

GOP debates her future

Days after the election, Palin's future is the subject of enormous speculation among Republicans - conservatives are pushing her to be among the party's next generation of leaders even as the old guard appears to be distancing itself.

The enmity toward Palin within some factions of the GOP remains abundantly clear. Even before the election was called on Tuesday night, damaging leaks began to spring from the embattled McCain campaign, some of whose top advisers were quoted in major newspapers suggesting Palin was a "whack job" and a "diva."

Those advisers said she repeatedly went "rogue," refusing to tell the campaign when she was talking up issues - such as Weather Underground member William Ayers' supposed ties to Obama - or chatting on the telephone with a Canadian radio-show prankster who claimed to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

On election night, the New York Times reported, Palin showed up at McCain's election-night gathering in Phoenix ready to read a concession speech. It goes against campaign protocol for a vice presidential candidate to speak on election night, and the move was vetoed by McCain strategist Steve Schmidt.

Even Carl Cameron of conservative Fox News reported this week that Palin showed "real problems with basic civics" during her debate prep.

"She didn't know the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement," NAFTA, a key agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada, he said GOP insiders told him. She also "didn't understand that Africa was a continent and not a country," and asked for explanation about the difference between South Africa and Africa, he reported.

Wearing just towels

Revelations by Newsweek also were shocking: At the GOP convention, Palin was so "completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined" that she greeted McCain advisers Schmidt and Mark Salter in her hotel room "wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair."

And the lingering matter of her wardrobe spending continues - a Republican Party attorney has been assigned to look into Palin's designer clothing purchases and, reportedly, to retrieve the expensive items.

Newsweek said that Palin "used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards," something that the McCain campaign didn't find out until aides asked for reimbursement.

"One aide estimated that she spent 'tens of thousands' more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost," the magazine said.

"An angry aide ... said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books," according to the magazine.

Still, conservative leaders downplayed those reports, insisting that base voters were deeply impressed by Palin and her contributions to the ticket.

"The candidacy of Sarah Palin was immensely helpful, absolutely essential to making this a reasonably close race," said Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committee member from Virginia.

"If she had not been on the ticket, our Republican ticket would have fared as Dole's did back in 1996," Blackwell said. He called her one of "a new generation of conservatives in the Republican Party that we are looking at."

GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway said that before anyone begins talking about Palin's possibilities in 2012, "watch how she is viewed in 2010."

"I would be very interested in how many candidates ask her to campaign, ask her to come out of Alaska and join her on the campaign trail as a standard-bearer," she said.

On the potentially damaging stories, Conway added, "I'm not surprised. I'm just very disappointed ... because it seemed like some of the stories were being dispatched before the campaign was over" - and at a time when the campaign had its hands full with other things, "like Florida."