Palin hits back at Cheney over ‘mistake’ comments

Sarah Palin is hitting back at former vice president Dick Cheney’s contention that her selection as the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee was “a mistake.”

Palin suggested that Cheney is buying into a false media narrative and, in the process, made a joke about the vice president’s quail-hunting accident in which he accidentally shot his friend. (Palin’s comments on Cheney begin at the 7-minute mark.)

“Seeing as how Dick — excuse me, Vice President Cheney — never misfires, then evidently he’s quite convinced that what he had evidently read about me by the lamestream media, having been written, what I believe is a false narrative over the last four years,” Palin said Tuesday night on Fox News. “Evidently Dick Cheney believed that stuff, and that’s a shame.”

Palin noted that she had sky-high approval ratings as governor of Alaska at the time of her selection and was generally seen as a very successful governor. She suggested that turning down the job would have been the easy choice.

“It would have been a mistake to have hunkered down, just lived that luxurious, if you will, comfortable lifestyle in Alaska,” Palin said.

Of course, Cheney wasn’t really criticizing Palin for taking the job, but rather the Republican Party for selecting her in the first place.

“I like Gov. Palin. I’ve met her. I know her. She – attractive candidate,” Cheney told ABC’s Jonathan Karl over the weekend. “But based on her background, she’d only been governor for, what, two years. I don’t think she passed that test … of being ready to take over. And I think that was a mistake.”

Palin used a baseball analogy to suggest that the Republican party establishment is beating up on her.

“Sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger, baby; sometimes you’re the ball,” she said. “And evidently, in these last months, per many, many comments from those within the GOP establishment, I’m the ball.”

Palin has been increasingly active in GOP primaries in recent weeks, including backing grass-roots favorite Ted Cruz, who won the Texas GOP Senate nomination Tuesday.

And she’s got a real chance to be a part of the dialogue in the Republican Party if her candidates keep winning.

But Palin often allows herself to be dragged into petty back-and-forths like the one with Cheney, which doesn’t strike us as particularly helpful in increasing her stature in the party. Then again, dueling with the likes of Cheney only bolsters her outsider credentials.