Sarah Palin to Fox News

updated

In case you thought ratings over at Fox News Channel couldn’t get any better, get ready for the next bump. Palin goes pundit. Jim Rutenberg reports:

The network confirmed that Ms. Palin would appear on the network’s programming on a regular basis as part of a multiyear deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ms. Palin will not have her own regular program, one person with knowledge of the deal said, though she will host a series that will run on the network from time to time.

The New York Times did a nice, big profile on Ailes yesterday, today they get the scoop.

In an alternate universe, “60 Minutes” was quite something last night, with more revelations from the campaign trail via, once again, the new book “Game Change,” by New York Magazine‘s John Heilemann and Time magazine’s Mark Halperin. Sarah Palin a big topic of discussion, none of it good for her. But as usual, her fans don’t care. One comment over at CBS:

I’d take Sarah Palin’s word over any of these guys, anyday. As far as MCCain’s top strategist, that was the worst campaign I have ever seen. Palin was the only bright spot. …

That may be true, but she’s yet to prove herself on foreign policy, which has always been the big hurdle for her. Until you remember that George W. Bush did it… beating well versed foreign policy Democrats (Gore and Kerry), twice. Still, Bush never had anything this frightening (said about him) before his run for president:

“Her foreign policy tutors are literally taking her through, ‘This is World War I, this is World War II, this is the Korean War. This is the how the Cold War worked.’ Steve Schmidt had gone to them and said, ‘She knows nothing,’” Heilemann told Cooper. “A week later, after the convention was over, she still didn’t really understand why there was a North Korea and a South Korea. She was still regularly saying that Saddam Hussein had been behind 9/11. And, literally, the next day her son was about to ship off to Iraq. And when they asked her who her son was going to fight, she couldn’t explain that.”

Steve Schmidt talking with Anderson Cooper last night validated the reporting in “The Change” on Sarah Palin, even saying Couric was not unfair in the devastating interviews. Interesting that even though he thinks a Palin nomination would be “catastrophic,” as Anderson Cooper put it, for Republicans, Schmidt believes that without Palin on the ticket in ’08 Republicans would have lost by even bigger margins.

That is the conundrum for Republicans, who will be battling Tea Partiers all the way through the primary season. And they still have to contend with the emotional attachment voters feel towards Palin, which few others in the party can match. But as I’ve said before, including in this new media poll from National Journal, I still think the big worry for Democrats remains Mitt Romney.

There are a lot of people trying to downplay “The Change,” criticize the gossipy nature of it. However, the authors are not selling it as anything but what they got from people on the inside, which means anonymous sources will be replete, because insiders rarely go on the record, unless they have nothing to lose. Sen. Ben Nelson went on the record last night on “60 Minutes” to verify what was written about Clinton regarding some in the Democratic establishment being worried. A few of those stories leaked at the time. So, for now, there hasn’t been anyone who has disputed what’s being reported in the book, though Reid reportedly felt betrayed by the authors revealing the gaffe he made about Obama, even though what they reported was true. With Halperin and Heilemann interviewing more than 200 people “on background,” which means that you won’t identify the source, but you’re going to use the information. Though critics on the outside don’t like the Beltway feel of the quotes and teases being offered so far, which is valid, until you realize that this book is about the insider politics of a national election that revolves around taking power in Washington, D.C., which is all about who’s inside and who’s out.

It may be political porn to some, a political junky’s guilty pleasure, but it sells.