The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has committed to delivering the keynote address at Right Online, the annual gathering of conservative bloggers and online activists organized by the Koch-backed non-profit group Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
This year’s meeting is focused on higher-level tactics and strategies than past year’s editions of Right Online, which sometimes had the feel of a crash course on blogging 101. The Vegas conference features training on video exposes to be conducted by guerrilla video journalist James O’Keefe, a session on polling featuring conservative’s favorite pollster Scott Rasmussen and a session moderated by columnist Michelle Malkin entitled “How to Use Facebook & Twitter to Win,” which will include instruction on using social media to drive narratives.
It’s an area in which Palin can rightly be considered a pioneer, having mastered a high-impact, communication style that almost completely circumvents a traditional media from which she’s sometimes gotten rough treatment.
In addition to her regular, paid appearances on Fox News, Palin tapped social media such as Facebook and Twitter, combined with her own star power, to deliver endorsements of allies and cutting attacks on opponents that sometimes drove the political debate for days. While her impact had diminished somewhat after she announced that she wouldn’t seek the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, she’s increasingly carved out a place for herself in recent months as a Triple-A level political kingmaker and conservative movement figure.
“Sarah Palin is an expert at harnessing social media technology and tactics to shape the narrative,” Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity Foundation, said in a statement announcing Palin’s Right Online keynote address. “Few others have demonstrated Palin’s prowess at breaking the rules of the Old Guard Media.”
The conference is going to be heavy on Breitbart hagiography, with Palin scheduled to introduce the team behind Breitbart’s network of conservative websites to toast his memory at a June 15 tribute.
After Breitbart died unexpectedly of heart failure in March, Palin wrote in a piece published on his Big Government website that “the conservative movement didn’t just lose a General — we lost an entire Special Forces Division.”
Palin will introduce the premieres of two Breitbart-related movies at Right Online. “Hating Breitbart” is a documentary two years in the making that chronicles Breitbart’s rise, the controversies he helped spur, and his impact on conservative and mainstream media alike. “Occupy Unmasked,” which features interviews with Breitbart, is billed as an exposé of the Occupy Wall Street protests that “will rock the crazed Left to the core,” according to David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United, which produced the movie.
Americans for Prosperity wouldn’t comment on how much it’s paying Palin to speak. But she commands speaking fees ranging into the low six-figures. And in 2010, AFP spent $253,000 on honoraria, including a $128,000 payment to the speakers’ bureau that represents Palin, with whom AFP had contracted to speak at its Defending the American Dream Summit in Clarkston, Mich., in May 2010. (More)
WASHINGTON, March 20, 2012 — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the first woman to receive the Sons of Italy Foundation’s (SIF) Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Service, to be presented at the SIF’s 24th annual National Education & Leadership Awards (NELA) Gala on May 23, 2012, in Washington, D.C.
The award was established three years ago to recognize the extraordinary public and humanitarian service to America by people who are not of Italian heritage. Clinton follows previous honorees Vice PresidentJoe Biden (2009), President Bill Clinton(2010), and U.S. Senator Jack Reed (2011).
“We are deeply honored and pleased that Secretary Clinton has agreed to accept this award, which recognizes her long record of outstanding service to her fellow Americans and people of other nations,” says SIF CEO Philip R. Piccigallo
The SIF and its parent organization, the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) created this special award category to underscore OSIA’s efforts to improve human conditions globally, building upon the SIF’s long record of relief efforts in Italy, Europe, South America, Africa, Mexico, the Caribbean and Asia. To date, the SIF and OSIA have donated $119 million to these efforts.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tireless advocacy on behalf of women and girls both here and abroad as first lady; U.S. senator; and now, secretary of state, makes her richly deserving of such recognition,” Piccigallo says. Since Secretary Clinton will be traveling during the Gala, she will accept the award via video. Other honorees at the 2012 NELA Gala will include:
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace (ret.)
Secretary-Treasurer of the Laborers International Union of North America Armand Sabatoni, and
CEO of Mediterranean Shipping Company Claudio Bozzo
Also to be honored at this year’s gala will be 10 to 12 of the brightest and most talented scholars of Italian descent, chosen from a highly selective national competition, who will accept substantial awards ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 that will enable them to attend some of America’s top colleges and universities.
The NELA Gala is the hallmark of the SIF’s public affairs and fund-raising programs and highlights the foundation’s commitment to educational excellence, leadership and the betterment of society.
The Sons of Italy Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Order Sons of Italy in America, the oldest and largest organization for men and women of Italian heritage in the United States, founded with the purpose of preserving Italian American culture, encouraging educational excellence among Italian Americans and improving lives in other areas.
In his Dec. 11 review of Bill Clinton’s “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy,” Jeff Madrick trots out the three fallacies that have prevented conventional liberals from understanding the importance of the Clinton administration’s approach and achievements.
First, he posits an imagined tension between Clinton’s criticism of reflexive antigovernment thinking and his work to end big, bureaucratic government. He also chides Clinton for not pushing for a return to the 80-year-old policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. And he wraps everything up in an accusation of political timidity.
What Madrick and others haven’t accepted is that Clinton actually believed in the new vision of government he put into action. “For at least a decade, the system we constructed in the Great Depression has been breaking down,” he said in a speech in July 1980 — long before he became president and long before his latest book. “Our challenge today, as Democrats, is to recognize that this is the time of transition and respond to it. . . .
I honestly believe the issue is not less government and the issue is not more government. The issue is what kind of government we are going to have.” Clinton’s remarkable consistency over a long career has been a testament to his personal faith in his vision. Madrick and others may not agree, but they should at the very least grapple with the ideas Clinton promoted during a presidency that stands as the most economically successful in the past half-century.
ANDREI CHERNY
Phoenix
The writer is president of the journal Democracy and a former Clinton White House aide
If Americans in their infinite wisdom choose to keep a Democrat in the White House through 2016, let it be Hillary Clinton.
Increasingly the question of whether President Obama should be challenged for the 2012 nomination is surfacing among disgruntled Democrats worried about a solid Republican victory next fall.
They’re right to be concerned: the crises facing the United States and the world deserve better than Obama’s oldest established permanent floating re-election campaign.
There’s no doubt Clinton’s tireless and often effective performance as secretary of state demonstrates she would bring more seasoned judgment to the Oval Office than its current resident. Here are a just a few reasons the Democratic Party should bite the bullet and jettison the nation’s one-term Senate orator and try to elect the nation’s first woman president.
Beginning with the political dimension of his conduct of the war in Afghanistan to class war at home, Obama’s priorities seem to be governed more by his re-election timetable than the demands of the national interest and reflective responses to the galloping changes in the global order
Contrary to mainstream opinion, Obama is a mediocre politician. Were it not so, surely he would have known that people get wise to polished repetitive, but empty speeches — and know the difference between bread and butter now and pie in the sky later.
Joblessness and fear of watching retirement savings vanish weigh heavier on the nation’s collective mind than long-range climate change and health care reform. The president’s touted political instincts should have told him all that. But, as James Carville once noted so cogently, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
But while Obama talked jobs and initiated a jobs bill on his sixth day in office, almost all of his mind and determination remained focused on health care — his overriding priority.
There is more. Even a short and substantively fruitless effort in spring 2009 to get agreement on a new U.N. climate change protocol outranked jobs at home on Obama’s must-do list.
Health care came first, no matter what. The president spent a year getting it on the books, while he assured the country that his close to trillion-dollar economic stimulus program was creating jobs.
He lost no time proclaiming the recession over — blind and deaf to the reality that it was a “jobless recovery.” He saw the upticking Gross National Product statistics and forgot or never understood they reflected only record earnings of financial institutions.
Hillary Clinton with her wealth of experience as first lady, a two-term senator from New York and now the world’s leading diplomat would hardly have been so blind.
Obama’s economic stimulus was a bust because, among his many other blunders, he left the writing of the legislation to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in their veto-proof Congress — without benefit of Republican input. As a result, Congress presented him with a Christmas tree adorned with pork barrels, but bare of jobs with a future.
. Her party — and her country — badly need her services. She’s likely the only potential winner the Democrats can muster.
Bogdan Kipling is a Canadian journalist in Washington.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton records interviews for American TV shows in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Oct. 23, 2011.
By Massimo Calabresi | October 27, 2011
Hillary Clinton argues in our cover story this week, now available online to subscribers, that America is not so much in decline as adjusting to a world of increasingly diffuse power, where like-minded networked individuals, non-governmental organizations and other non-traditional global actors may steer events as much as great power capitals. Clinton lays out “smart power” strategies for protecting and advancing U.S. interests in that new non-polar world.
We argue that Clinton is something of an expert at coming up with strategies for maximizing limited power given her life experiences, including being a First Lady with high visibility but little official swat, and a Secretary of State in the administration of her former rival, President Obama, who makes the final call on most major foreign policy and national security decisions with a small group of aides at the White House—and without Clinton.
The story is told largely through the lens of the very limited war in Libya, which is in many ways Clinton’s war, thanks to her efforts lining up the Arab and European coalitions that fought it. We have some good reporting on her trip there last week, as well as on the internal and external challenges she faced in advancing the cause of intervention. We also lay out the ways in which Libya remains dangerously unpredictable, and underscore areas where her new strategies are more talk than action.
Lastly, we polled her against Romney and Perry, and found that she does better, by far, than Obama, leading Romney by 17 points and Perry by 26*. Her closest aides strongly dismiss any 2012 ambitions and say 2016 is very unlikely: she’d be 69 the day of the vote that year. We don’t speculate on the source of her popularity.
One item that came up in research but didn’t fit with the piece. Clinton has been talking about the limits of power from her first moment on the public stage–her rambling, idealistic speech to the graduating class of 1969 at Wellesley. In it, she refers to her favorite passage from T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker” about trying again and again in the face of resistance. It’s not my favorite poem—I like my inter-war humanism without the religious overlay. But it gives a sense of just how long Clinton has been thinking about power and how to leverage it:
…What there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
*A national poll conducted for TIME on Oct. 9 and 10 found that if Clinton were the Democratic nominee for President in 2012, she would best Mitt Romney 55% to 38%, Rick Perry 58% to 32% and Herman Cain 56% to 34% among likely voters in a general election. The same poll found that President Obama would edge Romney by just 46% to 43%, Perry by 50% to 38% and Cain by 49% to 37% among likely voters.
(Reuters) – The United States plans to open a “virtual embassy” for Iran that will give Iranians online information about visas and student exchange programs despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.
Clinton, in interviews with the Persian language services of the BBC and Voice of America, defended U.S. sanctions against Iran and said Washington had a strong criminal case linking Tehran to a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
Clinton used both interviews to stress that the United States hoped to broaden contacts with regular Iranians despite tensions with the Tehran government, which she said was being transformed into a military dictatorship.
“My goal in speaking to you today is to clearly communicate to the people of Iran, particularly the very large population of young people, that the United States has no argument with you. We want to support your aspirations.
“We would be thrilled if tomorrow the regime in Iran had a change of mind,” she told the Voice of America.
Clinton said the “virtual embassy” web site would be open by the end of the year and it would provide Iranians with information on visas and other programs.
The United States broke formal diplomatic relations with Tehran in 1980 following the Iran hostage crisis, and ties have remained tense amid disputes over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. charges that Iran is the most active state sponsor of terrorism around the world.
In his waning months in office, President George W. Bush weighed opening a U.S. Interests Section, which could issue visas, in Tehran, but ultimately decided against it.
Clinton said the United States was providing both technology and training to help Iranians circumvent government limits on the Internet and other forms of communication while seeking to expand sanctions on Tehran.
She acknowledged economic sanctions sometimes caused difficulties for average Iranians, but said they were the best tool to pressure Iran’s leaders.
POWER STRUGGLE?
“We see disturbing trends and actions having to do with the continuing covert effort to build a nuclear weapons program … with a lot of deception, a lot of lying to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the rest of the international community,” Clinton told the BBC.
“We see aggressive behavior toward neighbors in the region, we see efforts to try to hijack and undermine the so-called Arab Spring awakening,” She said. “We do not want a conflict with Iran but we do want to see the rulers of Iran change their outlook and their behavior.”
Clinton said the door remained opened to talks with Tehran on its nuclear program, although she suggested the outlook was complicated by political divisions within the Iranian government itself.
“I believe there’s a power struggle going on inside the regime and they can’t sort out what they really are willing to do until they sort out who’s going to do what,” she said.
Clinton said she was aware that many people around the world were skeptical about U.S. charges this month that Iran was tied to a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador, but said she believed Washington had a strong case.
“I taught criminal law some years ago. It’s a very strong case. It certainly raises the right questions and I think it will be a successful case,” she told the BBC.
Iran has rejected the U.S. accusation as a fabrication designed to sow discord in the oil-rich Gulf.
Clinton said details of the case, in which two Iranians with security links are accused of seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador with help from members of a Mexican drug cartel, reflected a broader pattern of dangerous behavior by the Quds Force, the covert operations arm of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
“I understand people questioning it because it was such a shocking plot. It was shocking to us when we uncovered it,” Clinton told Voice of America.
“They’ve gotten more reckless,” Clinton told the BBC, saying the alleged plot was an attempt by the Quds Force “to thumb their nose at the Americans.”
_____________
“TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel accompanied Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her recent trip to Libya, Oman, Afghanistan and Pakistan. On Oct. 19, in the course of reporting for TIME’s cover story, which is now available online to subscribers, he conducted a wide-ranging interview with her, discussing among other things, the Middle East, China and American exceptionalism. A transcript of most of that conversation follows.
Hillary v. Oprah — Oprah won the battle, but Hillary won the war
She who laughs last, laughs best. Oprah helped Obama win the Presidency over Hillary in 2008. But now Oprah's show is finished -- while Hillary is still rising. Flanked by George Mitchell after Obama spoke at the State Department on May 19, 2011 Credit: Getty Images
Looking happier than ever. Hillary is now the most accomplished woman in the history of American politics. Walking with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in London, May 25, 2011. Credit: Getty Images
Oprah went off the air this week with much fanfare.The hoopla — though annoying to some — was well-earned.Oprah’s rise from a dirt poor and abusive childhood to the most powerful woman in the entertainment biz epitomizes the American Dream. She has mothered millions and changed lives with her philanthropy.
Truly, Oprah Winfrey is a woman to celebrate.That’s why it’s especially sad that her lapse of judgment in 2008 ran her off the air so quickly.Oprah endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008.Women – especially the middle class white women who formed her core audience – felt betrayed.
Oprah had never forayed into politics before – and her first foray was to kneecap Hillary Clinton, a hero for middle and working class women.Some have suggested that Oprah’s endorsement put Obama over the top; he would not be President without her, which is a testament to her power.
Unsurprisingly, Republicans and Clinton Democrats were not impressed.In the wake of helping Obama win the White House, Oprah saw her favorability ratings and the ratings for her once-dominant television show drop.
No doubt Oprah saw the writing on wall and decided to end her show before the bottom fell completely out.It did not have to be this way.But Oprah’s disgraceful dismissal of Hillary’s candidacy and consequent demise ranks as yet another example of the curious series of downfalls now afflicting so many 2008 Hillary backstabbers.
Oprah may be the most powerful woman in American entertainment — but Hillary Rodham Clinton is still the most powerful and admired woman in the world.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday warned Republicans to reverse plans to cut the US foreign aid budget or undermine US efforts to stabilize a North Africa and Middle East in turmoil.
Clinton also told Republican lawmakers that their proposed cuts for 2012 would hurt US efforts to roll back the insurgency in Afghanistan, build a stable, democratic Iraq and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
She highlighted how US diplomacy and the US Agency for International Development are helping to advance US national interests by seeking to end the bloodshed and help civilians in Libya, a major oil producer.
“This is an unfolding example of how we use the combined assets ….of diplomacy, development, and defense to protect American security and interests and advance our values,” Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“It is the most effective — and cost-effective — way to sustain and advance our security across the world. And it is only possible with a budget that supports all the tools in our national security arsenal,” she said.
In Iraq, Clinton said, US diplomats and civilian experts are “poised to keep the peace” after the withdrawal of nearly US 100,000 troops, who cost the United States much more to deploy than civilians.
In Afghanistan, a recent surge in US troops and civilians is paving the way “for our diplomatic surge to support Afghan-led reconciliation that could end the conflict and put Al-Qaeda on the run,” the chief US diplomat said.
“We have imposed the toughest sanctions to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” she added.
“And we are working to open political systems, economies, and societies at a remarkable moment in the history of the Middle East and to support peaceful, orderly, irreversible democratic transitions in Egypt and Tunisia,” she said.
“Our progress is significant, but our work is ongoing. These missions are vital to our national security, … and now would be the wrong time to pull back,” Clinton added.
Secretary Clinton: Assessing US Foreign Policy Priorities
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC
October 15, 2010
On October 20th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger will participate in the first of a series called “The Secretaries: Conversations on Diplomacy.”
Co-sponsored by HBO, the Conversation will enable the Secretaries to discuss the issues of the day and reflect on their experiences as America’s top diplomat. Michael Beschloss, an award-winning historian, will moderate the Conversation. New Foreign Service Officers, members of the Diplomatic Corps, current State Department employees and policy leaders will be present in the audience.
Discussion topics for the Conversation have also been suggested and promoted on The Sounding Board, the State Department’s internal online idea forum for domestic and overseas employees.
The event will also launch the 50th Anniversary Patrons of Diplomacy Initiative for the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the Department of State.
For fifty years, the art of diplomacy has thrived in the State Department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms against a stunning backdrop of American art and architecture from the time of our country’s founding and of its formative years. The historic suite of forty two rooms contains a museum-caliber collection of American fine and decorative art, including 5,000 objects from the period of 1750-1825. In these rooms, the United States has signed treaties and conducted summit negotiations, hosted peace talks and facilitated trade agreements.
The Patrons of Diplomacy Initiative will ensure that the Rooms and collection continue to provide an extraordinary backdrop for American diplomacy.
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the President’s Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence. History On January 10, 1780, the Second ... Continue reading →
The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee has committed to delivering the keynote address at Right Online, the annual gathering of conservative bloggers and online activists organized by the Koch-backed non-profit group Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
WASHINGTON, March 20, 2012 — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the first woman to receive the Sons of Italy Foundation’s (SIF) Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Service, to be presented at the SIF’s 24th annual National Education & Leadership Awards (NELA) Gala on May 23, 2012, in Washington, D.C.
The hoopla — though annoying to some — was well-earned. Oprah’s rise from a dirt poor and abusive childhood to the most powerful woman in the entertainment biz epitomizes the American Dream. She has mothered millions and changed lives with her philanthropy. 
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Hillary Unleashed 