On December 5, 2009, Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will head to Fairfax, Virginia, for a stop on her book tour to promote "Going Rogue".
The location would, normally, be rather insignificant -- another shopping center locale on a book tour with many such forums. But it represents one of the few forays Palin will make into supposed "blue" state territory.
During the campaign, McCain senior policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer famously declared that northern Virginia -- namely, Fairfax County -- was not "real Virginia" because exiles from Washington D.C. had filtered there. She was largely rebuked for the line and ended up walking it back. But Palin, too, pushed the idea that there was, in fact, an inauthentic U.S.A., to contrast with those "pro-America areas of this great nation."
The former vice presidential candidate's book tour consist mainly of areas that she likely sees as "pro-American." According to her Facebook page, she'll be traveling to Richland, Washington, Roswell, New Mexico, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Billings, Montana, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Sandpoint, Idaho.
The few notable exceptions, it seems, are Minneapolis, Minnesota, (site of the 2008 Republican National Convention) and Sioux City, Iowa -- a key site in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. One of the only locations in the northeast is Washington, Pennsylvania. There is no stop in New England.
All told, the schedule of the book tour may best be described as playing to one's base. But it's not entirely consistent with Palin's own book. As she writes in "Going Rogue":
"Like every other ordinary American, I'm tried of the divisions and the special interests that pit us against one another. It doesn't matter whether you grew up in Skagway or San Francisco, you're an American."
UPDATE: An earlier version of this piece said that the only northeast stop on the book tour is Washington, Pennsylvania. It's not. Palin is also stopping in Rochester, New York.