Palin vows to fight on without TV gig

No indication she may go back to life in Alaska

T he “lamestream media”, as Sarah Palin calls it, may have written her off now that the former vicepresidential candidate and tea party favourite has lost her principal media voice as a well- paid commentator on Fox News.

But there’s no indication that Palin will go back to life in Alaska as the former mayor of a small town and then governor for two years, fishing and hunting with her family before Senator John McCain picked her out of relative political obscurity to be his running mate in 2008.

“I was raised to never retreat and to pick battles wisely, and all in due season,” she said in the one substantial interview she’s given since Real

Clear Politics first reported that Palin and Fox had parted ways.

Fox reportedly offered Palin far less than the milliondollar annual contract that had included a broadcast studio at her home in Wasilla, Alaska. She turned it down, and Fox had no inclination to up the ante.

“What happened, quite simply, is that Palin’s star had faded,” Howard Kurtz wrote in Newsweek’s the Daily Beast. “She was no longer the rock star of 2008, her future presidential ambitions the subject of constant speculation.”

For Fox News, it seemed to be largely a business decision. Or as CEO Roger Ailes put it in 2011, “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.” But there was more to it than that, it seems.

In her interview with Stephen Bannon on Breitbart. com, Palin promised to stay in the fight, pointedly targeting establishment Republicans as well as President Obama.

“Focus on the 2014 election is … imperative,” she said. “It’s going to be like 2010, but this time around we need to shake up the GOP machine that tries to orchestrate away too much of the will of constitutional conservatives who don’t give a hoot how they do it in DC.