JOE McGINNISS

The movie about herself that Sarah will travel to Iowa to watch on Tuesday–unless she cancels her trip–is called “The Undefeated.”

How could a serious person, even a serious conservative, use that title for a movie about Sarah?

She was defeated, most famously, in her run for vice president in 2008.

Prior to that, she was defeated in her run for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002.

Those are two defeats in tries for elective office.

But Sarah’s history of defeat is much more extensive.

She was defeated in the Miss Alaska pageant.

She was defeated in four different attempts to graduate from college before she finally managed it at University of Idaho.

She was defeated in her attempt to get a creationist majority elected to the Wasilla School Board in the early 1990′s.

She was defeated in her attempt to have abortion banned at the Mat-Su Valley hospital.

Before her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated when she applied for a position as dispatcher with the Palmer, Alaska, police department and was not hired.

After her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to appoint Alaska Independence Party and John Birch Society member Steve Stoll to the city council.

As mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons in 1997, a move that nearly led to her recall.

As mayor, she was also defeated in the courts when she tried to build a new sports arena on land the city did not own—a defeat for which Wasilla is still paying.

She was defeated in her first attempt to hold down an appointed job, when she had to bail from her post on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004, due to her inability to grasp the complexities of the commission’s work.

Mike Miller, the ultra-right wing candidate she supported against Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the 2004 GOP primary for U.S. Senate, was defeated.

As governor of Alaska, she was defeated in her attempt to have her ex-brother in law Mike Wooten fired from the state police.

Also as governor, she was defeated in her attempt to require teenagers to obtain parental consent for abortions.

Also as governor she was defeated in her attempt to have the state pay the expenses involved in her bringing her children with her on political trips, and her image suffered an even greater defeat when it was disclosed that she’d been billing state taxpayers a per diem charge for the more than three hundred days she spent at her Wasilla home while serving as governor.

Her reputation as an ethical reformer suffered another defeat when a state-appointed investigator found that she’d abused the power of her office in her attempt to have Wooten fired.

In 2009, she was defeated in her attempt to install her former personal attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross, as Alaska attorney general.

Subsequent to her resignation, it’s become clear that her strongest initiative as governor–the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)–has proven a costly failure.

And last summer Sarah was defeated in her attempt to bully me into vacating the premises I’d rented next door to her on Lake Lucille.

Not to mention how many Tea Party candidates she supported last fall were defeated. (Anybody remember Christine O’Donnell? How about Joe Miller, in her own (former) state of Alaska?)

How many defeats is that?

More than enough to make an utter mockery of the title of the hagiographic propaganda film that she hopes–and no doubt prays–will pull her national political career out of its terminal free-fall.

Bookmark It