Sarah Palin is a GOPAC graduate.

[DogPoundPup]

http://www.gopac.org/alumni/?lk=6358988-6358988-0-33279-zLBxouYj8ob0C01wguWGgERCfSjEu50C

This info came to me via email from Gloria A. Totten, Progressive Majority
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GOPAC is the leading candidate recruitment and training operation for the conservative right - and our direct competitor when it comes to who controls government.

GOPAC was founded in 1978 by conservatives who knew they were going to have to work outside the Republican Party to take it over. They knew they would have to recruit their own kind to run to wrest control of government from the Democrats. They knew they needed a long-term plan to build their "farm team".

They went to work and Newt Gingrich took over the organization in the 1980s. You see, Gingrich wasn't satisfied with the election of Ronald Reagan. He wanted to see conservatives in control at the local, state AND national levels - even if it took a generation. Under Gingrich's leadership, GOPAC stepped up its candidate recruitment efforts, sought out "movement conservatives" and taught them how to run campaigns and talk about issues in a way that galvanized the far right base while not completely alienating moderate voters.

It worked. During the next 20 years, they took over the majority of state legislatures and governors. They singlehandedly led the "Republican Revolution" that took over Congress in 1994. They elected George W. Bush.

And, yesterday, one of their own accepted the Republican nomination for vice president of the United States.

If you're a conservative, that's how you go from being mayor of a small town to governor to the very top of the ticket.

Don't think for a moment, despite Democratic victories in 2006 and a good climate for 2008, that they are finished.

Today, GOPAC is the sixth largest national political organization in the country. It is three times larger and 26 years older than Progressive Majority.

But, we're hot on their trail.

Progressive Majority is the only national organization focused on recruiting, training and electing progressives to run for state and local office.

[patrice]

1. So that's her connection to Dobson? How's that work? Isn't THAT a problem?

[DogPoundPup]

2. I don't know that it is a 'problem' Dobson connection

But it sure explains how and why she walked into Wasilla politics and started her culture war.

As mayor, Palin brought culture wars to town

WASILLA, ALASKA - The world arrived here more than a century ago with the gold rush and later the railroad. Yet one aspect of American life did not come to town until 1996, the year Sarah Palin ran for mayor and Wasilla got its first local lesson in wedge politics.

The traditional issues that decided municipal elections in this town of less than 7,000 people -- Should we pave the dirt roads? Put in sewers? Which candidate is your hunting buddy? -- seemed all but obsolete the year Palin, then 32, challenged the three-term incumbent, John C. Stein.

Anti-abortion flyers circulated. Palin played up her church work and her membership in the National Rifle Association. The state Republican Party, never involved in the past because city elections are nonpartisan, ran advertisements on Palin's behalf.

Two years after Newt Gingrich, then the Republican leader of Congress, helped draft the Contract With America, Palin and her passion for Republican ideology and religious faith overtook a town known for a wide libertarian streak and for helping start the Iditarod dog sled race.

"Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, 'Whoa,' " said Stein, who lost the election. "But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I'm not a churchgoing guy and that was another issue: 'We will have our first Christian mayor.' "

"I thought, 'Holy cow, what's happening here? Does that mean she thinks I'm Jewish or Islamic?"' recalled Stein, who was raised Lutheran. "The point was that she was a born-again Christian."
Read More @ http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1204252.html#MI_Comments_Link

[patrice]

3. Dobson picked her for McCan't.

Wouldn't it be interesting if Dobson and GOPAC were working together? or is that okay?

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

4. Sources?

[DogPoundPup]

6. Sources or source ... I have a source

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/352178/secretive_right_wing_group_vetted_palin

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

11. Interesting, verrry interesting....

Thanks!

[DogPoundPup]

15. You are wlcome n/t

[patrice]

7. Saw it on this board sometime last night, during her speech.

I'll go back and look to see if I Replied.

[patrice]

9. DU member TwilightZone referred to "the story that Dobson vetted her"

no link

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

12. Thanks! Wasn't really being 'uppity', just wondering!

[patrice]

13. No problem! Wish I had more time to look into things.

:hi:

[DogPoundPup]

8. I know what you are saying, but until that is ALLOWED to be investigated

I don't know how we can legally prove anything.

[liberal1973]

5. GOPAC= Un-American

I though Germany removed these types of people in the 40s. Damn now they are here or maybe they always have been.

[yardwork]

10. I figured that that was why she got into politics in the first place.

I suspect that she's had mentors in the national GOPAC movement for a long time. They made sure she became governor of Alaska.

Who was that hateful woman from Hawaii last night? Is she another GOPACER?

[cap]

14. so this is how palin got hooked up with her lobbyist

[DogPoundPup]

16. Palin's learned from the best...