Sarah Palin personifies GOP divide

POLITICO

ANAHEIM, Calif. — There were 19 Republicans sitting onstage behind Sarah Palin when she rallied GOP activists here Saturday, but none was named Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina.

And just as the Republican candidates for governor and Senate here were physically absent from the event, they were also missing from Palin’s speech.

Not once during remarks that lasted just over 20 minutes did the former Alaska governor mention two of the national party’s most buzzed-about candidates running in the country’s largest state.

It’s possible that Palin didn’t want to mention Whitman and Fiorina for fear of handing Democrats fodder to use in the final two weeks of the election. She was on safer ground launching attacks against familiar national Democratic boogeymen and the mainstream media to a couple thousand Republicans who paid at least $25 per person to the Republican National Committee to hear their party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee............