Sarah Palin, RNC darling in 2008, heads to Arizona this week

Four years ago, Sarah Palin was the belle of the RNC ball, outwardly confident, affecting and relatable. Her keynote speech as the presumptive vice presidential nominee roused the audience in St. Paul, Minn., heralding what seemed to be a natural addition to presidential candidate John McCain's campaign, dubbed the Straight Talk Express.

Indeed, some lines are impossible to forget:

On motherhood: "I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

On her husband Todd: "Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package. And we met in high school. And two decades and five children later, he's still my guy."

This campaign, however, Palin didn't make the trip to the RNC. Er, the real Palin, that is.

Palin is campaigning in Arizona this week for Kirk Adams, who is running for the Republican nomination in the state's Fifth Congressional District race.

The New York Times reported Palin appeared at an Adams campaign stop in Gilbert, Ariz., Monday with Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" playing over the speakers.

“This election, folks, is not just about replacing the party that’s in power. It’s about who and what we’ll replace it with,” she said.

While she's operating far from the real Republican action this week, it seems Palin harbours little ill will.

“I’m making sure to get out there around the country,” Palin told Fox News, “and sometimes supporting underdogs — those that are underfunded, underpresented in terms of name recognition and surrogates out there on the political scene — making sure that those that need to be put on the map — because their message is the right message and their intentions are right — are heard from.”

Comments

[silkrose]

Who cares where she is?

[Craig]

She's just going to sit back, and watch the Republicans lose this election. In four years, when Obama's reached his term limit and the Deomocrats don't have a decent candidate to replace him with, she'll be shoved back down Americans' throats.

[Derek]

What a lame bid for web traffic, writing about someone who ISN'T at the convention. If all you want is hits, not news relevance, how about a headline like "Why no Sarah Palin Justin Bieber free credit score porn mesothelioma"?