Sarah Palin ‘exploratory’ bus tour starts on Sunday

First a movie and now an exploratory bus tour that starts in DC and heads north up the east coast? Oh yeah I think it’s on:

REAL CLEAR POLITICS – In a move designed to propel her closer to a presidential run, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will set out on a bus tour of the country on Sunday, making stops at symbolically significant venues along the way.

“Starting this weekend, Sarah Palin will embark on a ‘One Nation’ tour of historical sites that were key to the formation, survival, and growth of the United States of America,” SarahPAC treasurer Tim Crawford said in a statement to RealClearPolitics. “The tour will originate in Washington, D.C. It will proceed north up the east coast.”

Details were still being hammered out on Thursday, but sources indicated to RCP that the bus tour is expected to last several weeks and will be divided up into separate geographical stretches for logistical reasons.

Members of Palin’s immediate family are expected to join her on the trip, which will eventually take her through key early voting states.

According to aides who have traveled with her on past campaigns, Palin loathes fundraisers and many of the other necessities of life on the trail, but she relishes opportunities to interact with voters face-to-face. Palin’s retail politicking skills were indeed a key factor in her political rise in Alaska.

In spite of the celebrity profile that she has embraced since 2008, the unorthodox nature of the bus tour indicates that Palin recognizes that she would have to run a grassroots campaign that dusts off some of her shine, in order to highlight her blue-collar persona.

Palin will do just that on the first day of her tour on Sunday when she participates in Rolling Thunder-an annual Memorial Day weekend motorcycle rally held in Washington, D.C. Participants at this year’s event will gather outside the Pentagon before parading down Constitution Avenue on their way to the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial.

I hope she names her tour bus ‘Rolling thunder’ in honor of her first day on the tour. That would be an awesome name to take her through the election.


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