Palin's Political Mystery Tour

Ut-oh Politico!

The New Hampshire Republican Party found out Sarah Palin would be coming to town by hearing about it in the news.

Where would she be stopping? They didn’t know. Palin’s staff wouldn’t even return their calls, leaving them to ask reporters for more answers.

And they’re not alone: With hours to go before Palin’s bus tour is supposed to begin, it’s still unclear what she’ll be doing when she gets to the first stop. It’s even more of a mystery what her second stop will be.

Or when.

Or why.

Once again, the former vice presidential nominee has proven she can tilt the political world on its axis in an instant. This past week, it was Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann who took their campaigns to Iowa, but it was the news of Palin’s bus tour that really had people talking. A simple announcement on her website, and she got all the attention, all the interest.

“She’s not your typical politician, and from what I can tell, it doesn’t really matter,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “She’s going to have a following, she’s going to create news, and she does it in ways that don’t have structure to them or seem to have any kind of strategy.”

Surely she’s intending to use her swing through the early primary state to gauge what kind of support she’d have outside of the social conservative base in Iowa and South Carolina – or is she?

The bus tour is the first major test of what Palin’s organization can do on its own. For every other major public event since Palin resigned as Alaska governor, other people have done the details. Her paid speeches are handled by the people who hire her. The logistics and press for her two book tours were taken care of by her publisher. Her speech on the Mall at Glenn Beck’s rally last summer, the two fundraisers she’s done for the RNC, her appearances at events for tea party groups in Boston and Las Vegas — all that was coordinated by the groups that brought her in.

Palin rehired advance aides Doug McMarlin and Jason Recher to plan the tour. They’re now part of an increasingly small Palin circle, made even smaller since spokeswoman Rebecca Mansour was sidelined from talking to the press after tweets criticizing Palin’s daughter were posted by the Daily Caller earlier this week. SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford, a longtime Washington hand and campaign finance expert with deep ties to the Republican establishment, has been filling Mansour’s role on press. There’s a policy researcher, and she has former Bob Dole aide Michael Glasner serving as her chief of staff.

Along with her husband Todd and Palin herself, that’s the extent of the inner circle. And convinced she’s her own best spokesman and advocate, Palin calls all the shots directly.

Imagining how this would translate into a presidential campaign, with four events a day in four different locations — on top of all the fundraising calls, media interviews and strategy sessions – might seem like a stretch.

Take the roll-out of the bus tour: after doling out advance tidbits to a number of reporters under an embargo, Palin’s operation was caught off guard when a Fox News producer popped a tease of the news on the blog of Palin-friendly host Greta Van Susteren. RealClearPolitics then broke out a full story, as did POLITICO and Time. But each had different pieces of the story — and even taken together, the picture still isn’t complete.

So what is she doing on Sunday at Rolling Thunder, the veterans group motorcycle rally, and when will she be there?

Where is her bus stopping after Rolling Thunder and when?

How long is the tour?

“Updates will be posted on the website,” Crawford e-mailed back on Saturday afternoon.

So far, they haven’t been.

But it might not make a difference.

“I don’t think she thinks the rules apply to her. She doesn’t need to have the traditional trappings of a presidential campaign,” former Bush advisor Karl Rove said Thursday night on Fox News. “No finance committee, she can raise the money. She doesn’t need to go shake a lot of hands in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina.”

Unless Palin wants to engage, her team can go dark for weeks. Usually, that’s exactly what they do – especially given some of the bizarre coverage and treatment she’s received, helping out the mainstream media has rarely been a Palin priority.

Of course, none of her supporters know where the tour is going either. Not even the group whose event she’s crashing on Sunday knows exactly where and when to expect her.

“She’ll be in the parking lot with the rest of the 400,000 of us and then she’s gonna ride with us. I really don’t know what her plans are other than that,” said Nancy Regg, the national spokeswoman for Rolling Thunder.

“She was not invited to speak. She was not invited to do interviews. She was only invited to ride. The media took it as ‘Wow, Sarah is taking over,’” Regg added. “I know she’s not speaking – it won’t even be announced that she’s here.”

Beyond Sunday, things get even hazier. She’s supposed to swing through the civil war battlefields at Antietam and Gettysburg and to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Then, according to a statement, she’ll be heading “up through New England.” Not that people in Connecticut know whether to expect her.

“Have heard nothing on this, nor have I been contacted,” said Connecticut GOP chairman Chris Healy.

The highest profile event Palin has done for months, the bus tour could be key to building an early wave of support to ride through the presidential primaries — especially in New Hampshire, where a stronger than expected finish would pump adrenaline into her campaign and fear into her rivals.

But in the days leading up to the bus tour, Palin’s team was focused on something completely different.

Frank Bailey, a former aide, finally got his tell-all published on Tuesday after unsuccessfully shopping it for more than a year. And though the many damaging anecdotes about Palin had already been reported months ago after a leaked manuscript reached the press, Palin’s staff made discrediting him their top priority.

Alleging all kinds of inaccuracies in Bailey’s account — which focuses largely on provincial Alaska political score-settling — Crawford provided a detailed rebuttal of dozens of claims in the book and a carefully crafted 111-word statement attacking the book as a piece of “fiction” — a rare case of Palin actively engaging the press.

Less than a week later, it’s Palin’s high stakes reintroduction as a potential presidential candidate that’s dominating the news. And Bailey’s book? It’s barely cracked the top 100 on Amazon.