Half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin has endorsed ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina's run to dethrone Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate.
You've gotta imagine this breaks the heart of Irvine State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.
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DeVore has fought hard to brand himself as the one true conservative in the race for the Republican endorsement, the only bona fide tea partier with lifelong paleoconservative credentials. And for a while, it looked like he was succeeding, locking up the endorsement of anti-GOP establishment, far-right national figureheads like Senator Jim Demint, U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, and Michele Malkin, queen of the non-birther Obama conspiracy theorists.
But the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday
ran an article showing how DeVore has hit a bit of a snag after nearly two years of campaigning. Big-name conservatives organizations, like the
California Pro Life Council and
National Right to Life, have been coming down for Fiorina lately. The Palin endorsement is the latest and by far greatest blow to DeVore's failed campaign to acquire a monopoly on conservative credentials in the Senate primary race.
And some of the endorsements DeVore has been racking up of late have been pretty, well, unimpressive. Yesterday, he received the nod from the eugenics-y sounding (but not at all eugenics supporting), pro-life Population Research Institute. “Unlike certain politicians that I see in Washington on a daily basis, Chuck will be a reliable friend of Life and Family once he has been sworn in as the next U.S. Senator from California,” PRI president Steve Mosher told LifeNews.com.
Mosher, though, isn't exactly a disinterested observer: He
co-wrote spy novel China Attacks with DeVore, released in 2000. Of course, endorsements are often about who you know, so this is no great sin. But it's just another sign that the DeVore camp seems a little desperate. DeVore was reportedly
one of the few out-of-state politicians invited to speak at a Palin-headlined tea party in Nevada this past March. Sounds significant, but apparently not significant enough to garner Palin's support.
UPDATE: At 10 p.m. last night, following his first face-to-face debate with Fiorina and Tom Campbell, Chuck sent out a soul-searching message to supporters. Yes, the Palin thing stung. Highlights:
If you didn't hear, Sarah Palin posted a Facebook message earlier today about the California Republican primary.
She bashed Tom Campbell.
She tried to ignore me.
And she announced her support of Carly Fiorina.
She called Fiorina a “commonsense conservative” and said Fiorina is “the only conservative in the race who can beat Barbara Boxer.”
I like Sarah Palin. I think highly of her. But she got this dead wrong.
Carly Fiornia is NOT a conservative.
[snip]
I'm not going to lie to you, I would have liked Sarah Palin's endorsement, too (and I look forward to getting it after I win the primary).
But the support I most need and want is yours.
In the message, DeVore also said he would support Fiorina or Campbell against Boxer if either of them ended up winning the primary. The entire thing is posted at Red State. Hey commenters who said DeVore didn't care about Sarah–how's that nopey, changey thing workin' out for ya?
