Conservative Bloggers Cheer Palin Film

New York Times: Conservative Bloggers Cheer Palin Film

MINNEAPOLIS — A documentary portraying mainstream Republican leaders as villains and Sarah Palin as an inspirational heroine for the Tea Party received an enthusiastic reception from grass-roots conservatives at the film’s first public screening here on Friday night.

“The Undefeated,” an unapologetically partisan documentary meant to advocate for Ms. Palin’s potential candidacy for president, makes the case that she was the original Tea Party inspiration. It will make its premiere in Iowa in a couple of weeks but was shown to several hundred activists attending Right Online, a convention of conservative bloggers.

The two-hour film does not spare usual conservative targets like the news media and the Democratic party. But it is establishment Republican leaders — portrayed as toothless bystanders while Ms. Palin was attacked during her vice-presidential run in 2008 — who receive special scorn.

Ms. Palin represents “an existential threat” to them, Andrew Breitbart, the flame-throwing conservative blogger, says in the documentary, and he goes on to compare the party’s establishment to “eunuchs.”


The film would seem to have the potential to fire up support for candidates with Tea Party bonafides for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. They include Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota; Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who is considering a run; and, of course, Ms. Palin herself if she decides to jump in.

Those same contenders, representing an insurgent challenge to more mainstream candidates like Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, seemed the favorites of the 1,400 or so activists attending Right Online, a workshop on using the Internet to promote political causes and the conservative answer to the liberal Netroots conference, which is also taking place here this weekend.

Ms. Bachmann spoke at Right Online on Saturday morning. Mr. Perry, who received an award Friday evening, appeared on video (and drew groans for encouraging the right-wing digerati to “follow me on Tweeter”).

Ms. Palin appears in “The Undefeated” only in voice-over, although the film uses video footage from her days in office. The filmmaker, Stephen K. Bannon, said he was first approached by Ms. Palin’s aides but ended up making the film independently and with his own financing. He said he has never met Ms. Palin. The film uses passages of her audio recording for her book “Going Rogue.”

Ms. Palin’s successes as governor, which led to high approval ratings in the state for a time — and a fateful phone call at the Alaska state fair from Senator John McCain — is likely to come as news to some viewers, who heard little of her governing successes during the 2008 campaign. But the film’s account is also selective. There is no mention of the “bridge to nowhere” or Troopergate.

Introducing the movie, which will open in some theaters July 15, Mr. Breitbart, who published the compromising Twitter pictures that led to the resignation of Representative Anthony Weiner of New York this week, predicted a similar impact for “The Undefeated.”

“As we’ve noticed in the past few weeks,” he said, “the truth is like a nuclear bomb to the mainstream media.”