Levi Johnston was Paid Off

Hint: Levi Johnston and his family are being paid off for trashing Sarah and Bristol Palin. The motto of the reporters (Woodward and Bernstein) in Watergate was to "follow the money." The modern MSM doesn't follow payoffs as long as there's a whiff of salaciousness to focus on.

[Note: On my other blog, http://stevemaloneygop.blogspot.com I have Thurs. and Fri. columns on Joe Biden's pathological lying over the years, especially his mythical story about the details of the death of his first wife and infant daughter in a 1972 traffic accident.]

This column marks the beginning of effort to raise the intriguing question of where Levi Johnston and his family -- with his mother under indictment for drug sales -- are getting tens of thousands of dollars to pay for various expenses, including flights (for Levi, his mother, and his sister) to NY (at a cost of approximately $7,500) for the Tyra Banks show, as well as for the shiny new pick-up truck that the unemployed Levi (who apparently can't pay child care expenses) is driving. (Hey, at least Levi doesn't sell out his former "beloved" and his current son for mere peanuts.)

Obviously, the money comes from Obama supporters like George Soros and the investment bankers Obama is bailing out with billions of dollars, payoffs in their own right. I can't dot all the i's on l'affaire Levi yet, but if something stinks like a skunk, well, it's not the first rose of summer. And Levi and his odious mother are smelling very skunk-like these days. Since the Tyra Bankses of the world can't ask Levi any hard questions, well, we have to do the job for them.

Perhaps someone will be very daring and ask Mrs. Johnston who's paying her whopping legal expenses these days. Hint: It's not the Palin-for-President Committee. I don't believe Mrs. Johnston has much money lying around from her former profession of selling oxycontin.

Am I claiming that Obama, Axelrod, and Emanuel ("The Triangle of Evil") are making direct payments to the Johnstons? Silly question: that's why people like Obama and Axelrod have bagmen. As Richard Nixon put it, in politics, "deniability" is everything.

Consider Bristol Palin's comment that some people (hint: she meant Levi and his delightful family) were using the "Palin name" in order to make "money." Bristol is getting wiser by the moment.

If you'd like to read more about the Johnston family, I urge you to check out Ron Devito's blog at: http://sarahs-accomplishments.blogspot.com/2009/04/salacious-news-coverage-levi-johnston.html. Ron is a young guy, but he has the ability, as a friend of mine once put it, "to find out where the bones are buried."

There will be more to come this weekend. I urge you to pass this material on to friends and allies.

Palin: Learn From Bush's Failures

. . and why the Palin presidency doesn't have to fail. Below: I don't want Sarah Palin in 2020 to be complaining that "Soros and the media ruined my presidency." Instead, I want her -- about 2020, at the end of her second term -- saying, "I crushed George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and all those associated with them."

GWB was and is a good man, an American patriot. His wife was one of the greatest of First Ladies.

But he was a lousy salesman. (Today, Obama did a very poor job of "selling" the Afghan War, because he failed to make it personally meaningful to Americans.) Republican Presidents have a very small margin of error, because of media hostility, and somehow I never got the impression that GWB was having searching discussions of how best to "sell" the war or his handling of Katrina.

On somebody like Harriet Miers, the question is not whether she's an outstanding person, but rather: "How do I sell her as a credible nominee for the Supreme Court?' Yes, some conservatives stabbed her -- and GWB -- in the back, but that's the world we live in.

Compare the nomination of John Roberts, a bullet-proof candidate, versus that of Harriet, who never had a chance. The Gonzalez appointment turned out to be a disaster. Yes, he was loyal, but he wasn't much more than that.

He needed people around him who would say: "Mr. President, NO! It won't work." He didn't have such people.

Frankly, GWB's desire to have "friendly" relations with the White House Press corps showed a truly amazing naivete. Those people inhabit a culture that sees Bush's views and his religious faith as toxic.

His little "teasing" comments to journalists were seen as embarrassing and phony. They are not his friends; they will never be his friends.

Does he understand that? No, but Sarah Palin does.

Yes, Soros types and the Dems did everything they could to undermine GWB's presidency. What was his plan for counteracting that? Potentially, the POTUS is a thousand times more powerful than George Soros. It didn't work out that way. Soros lied -- and [the] Bush [presiency] died.

I don't want Sarah Palin in 2020 to be complaining that "Soros, Pelosi, Reid, and the media ruined my presidency." Instead, I want her saying, "I crushed Soros and all those associated with him and his kind." As Gen. MacArthur said, "There is no substitute for victory."