WASHINGTON -- Tease-in-Chief Sarah Palin, forever stoking speculation about a presidential run, now is touting her Alaska "farm" experience on the eve of a book-tour visit to first-caucus-state Iowa on Saturday.
As usual, the political pitch is part of a multimedia exercise: touting her TLC "reality" show as she promotes her book and woos rural Iowans who will be crucial voters in the Republican caucuses in 2012.
In a new tweet, the former governor and veep candidate argues that her family fishing business gives her a keen understanding of farm life on land.
"Like family farms, our Bristol Bay commercial fish business works the same way," she writes. "Watch Sunday on TLC; see work ethic rewarded out on the water!"
The GOP caucuses in Iowa are sure to be the scene of ferocious competition for conservative, pro-life "values voters," which is why Palin and other members of the FOX den -- former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- have taken tours of the state this month.
Anyone who doubts the seriousness -- or savvy -- or Palin's game plan needs to look closely at her book-tour travel schedule, particularly as it relates to what for her would be the make-or-break state of Iowa.
She is visiting Des Moines Saturday -- an obvious and central stop.
But also on Saturday she is stopping at Norfolk, Nebraska, a seemingly out-of-the-way place until you realize that coverage of the event there (and funneled through Omaha TV and Sioux City, Iowa TV) will blanket Western Iowa -- the most staunchly conservative and Republican part of the state.
She will reach those voters again on Dec. 2, when she travels to Spirit Lake, Iowa. It's not just a nifty name -- it's a central tourism spot in the midst of the farm-and-lake country of west-central Iowa.
Indeed, if there are parts of America (and Iowa) where people "cling to their guns and their religion," as candidate Barack Obama once famously said, Sarah the Farmer is heading right to 'em.