SMART POLITICS: Sarah Palin uttered more than 189,000 words over 150 appearances on various FOX broadcasts during her three years as an analyst at the network, or $15.85 per word. With the three-year contract now expired between FOX News and Sarah Palin, there is a wealth of commentary made by the former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice-Presidential nominee to dissect. Palin, who was paid a reported $1 million per year as a contributor to FOX since mid-January 2010 when FOX announced her signing, may not have made quite the splash her employers had hoped during this three-year period, and would, on occasion go weeks between appearances. So, did the network get their money’s worth? A Smart Politics review of the more than 150 FOX broadcasts in which Sarah Palin appeared as a paid commentator from 2010 through 2012 finds that she spoke 189,221 words on air during this span, for an average pay rate of $15.85 per word. MORE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Since then, Republicans lost the presidency – again to Obama. In Charlotte, N.C., this week, GOP higher ups are trying to figure out whether it’s the party’s message or the (largely) white, (largely) older, (largely) male profile that’s the problem as US political demographics move away from them to a younger, more diverse electorate. The tea party has not folded, but neither is it the force it once was. Meanwhile, establishment Republicans continue their move away from Palin. Her feuds with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney made news, as did her apparent snubbing by organizers of Mitt Romney’s nominating convention in Tampa last summer. More recently, Colin Powell criticized Palin for using a “racial-era slave term” in describing the nation’s first African-American president. “When I see a former governor say that the president is ‘shuckin’ and jivin’ — that’s a racial-era slave term,” Mr. Powell said, referring to Palin’s characterization of Obama’s response to the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans. Such comments, Powell said on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, indicate a “dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party.” If this is sounding like a political obituary for Sarah Palin, it may well be. MORE
DAILY BEAST: “Fox News offered Sarah Palin a new contract before she decided to part ways with the network where she has held forth as a commentator for the last three years. The new contract offered by Fox, say people familiar with the situation, would have provided only a fraction of the million-dollar-a-year salary. It was then, they say, that Palin turned it down and both sides agreed to call it quits.” MORE