Governor Palin is on a roll, she’s given quite a few successful speeches recently, 25 of her 36 endorses won their respective primaries, including the two now infamous long shots – who everyone had written off from the beginning – Joe Miller in Alaska and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and even a mega hit piece against her was debunked by the left and the right. Let’s not forget her big speech in Iowa later today.

As is always when the Governor has a good run, it is expected that all her detractors would be coming out of the woodwork with magnifying glasses to find something, anything, to turn the momentum against her. Watch out for a couple of more hit pieces and a series of polls that will come out over the next few days to put her in a negative light.

So last night when she appeared on the O’Reilly Factor and was faced with a sort of semi awkward situation, which she handled gracefully, I knew that her adversaries were going to turn it into a story.

I emailed a couple of friends: “This is the headline tomorrow, Ben Smith is definitely going to run with this”. Sure enough he did.

So what happened that got people so excited?

The interview in general was about the Republican establishment’s reaction to the O’Donnell victory. The discussion later turned to the influence of the Tea Party movement beyond the primaries.

That segment began with the following (see video at the 3:00 mark)

O’Reilly: Now when you see the landscape in the primaries, primaries are different than the election. The tea party has an enormous amount of power, and so do you, you guys are able, in New Hampshire your guy won too, I can’t even say his name. What’s his name up there?… What’s his name in New Hampshire? Tell me in my ear, some guy up there won the primary you endorsed him Governor… um all right, nobody knows. He’s got a long name he won, Tea Party guy won in New Hampshire OK…

The Governor didn’t respond.

Lets first get the facts right:

Governor Palin did not endorse the Tea party guy in New Hampshire and the Tea Party guy did not win. The candidate the Governor endorsed was the eventual winner, Kelly Ayotte, a woman.

Most reasonable people will conclude that she realized that O’Reilly was mistaken. She could have answered: “I didn’t endorse the Tea party Guy up there, he didn’t win either, the candidate I endorsed was Kelly Ayotte, a women, she won”

This would have made O’Reilly look like a total idiot and made the Governor appear like she’s gloating. In all fairness to O’Reilly, his show is pre-recorded in the afternoon, the NH results came in early afternoon, and Lamontagne was leading until the early morning. With the stories of the day being all about Tea Party successes, it is reasonable to believe that O’Reilly wasn’t yet up to speed and got things mixed up. The Governor decided to let it slide, hoping someone in the studio would correct him, so she did not turn it into an issue especially considering that wasn’t what the interview was about.

Governor Palin had recorded a robocall for her endorsee, the winner, just 24 hours earlier. So it’s obvious to any reasonable person that she was well on top of that race. However, there aren’t very many reasonable people in the Democrat Party.

Cross-Posted: Cronservatives4Palin