Following in the grand tradition of flaunting gaps in basic knowledge while addressing a university, Sarah Palin told a crowd at a fundraiser at California State University, Stanislaus last weekend that Ronald Reagan, whom she counts as a personal hero and inspiration, was also a California college graduate. She told the cheering crowd: "This is Reagan country, and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California's Eureka College would become so woven within and interlinked to the Golden State."
There's just one problem here: Reagan attended college in Illinois. The Alaska Dispatch reports that the former president went to Eureka College in Illinois from 1928 to 1932. He didn't move to California until five years after his graduation. There's no Eureka College in California, though there's a town of Eureka that has a College of the Redwoods nearby.
Immediately after the gaffe, reporters were caught on a live mike belonging to the local FOX affiliate trashing the former Alaska governor, Mediate reported. "The dumbness doesn’t just come from soundbites," one complained. The Fox affiliate says their reporters did not make the comments. Liberal MSNBC talking head Keith Olbermann jumped on the bandwagon last night, naming Palin one of the "worst people in the world" for the mistake in his nightly segment. You can watch the segment, which has the clip of Palin's remarks, below:
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports on a more serious recent mistake of Palin's political organization. Administrators for her legal defense fund accidentally sent out a rough draft of an email to thousands of supporters that falsely claimed the former governor faced "millions of dollars" in legal fees because of frivolous ethics suits against her. The corrected version of the email said the fees numbered in the hundreds of thousands, not millions.
Critics say several more claims in the email were not true. The email said 26 of 27 of the ethics violations against Palin were dismissed outright, which is false--three moved into the investigative phase. One inquiry resulted in a cash settlement and another found ethics had been abridged, but declined to recommend legal proceedings because the charge involved the dismissal of the head of the Alaska state trooper force, who was an at-will employee of the governor.
The email also alleged that the Democratic National Committee created a website whose goal is to keep Palin out of public office--a charge that the organization says is untrue. Last week, the earlier incarnation of Palin's defense fund was ruled illegal because it used Palin's former position as governor to raise money. The decision forced the fund's administrators to pay back the $400,000 in donations they raised, and to launch the newer version of the fund.
