Palin comments on crosshairs and Giffords shooting

Sarah Palin has put up a video on her Facebook page giving a 7 minute statement partly defending her use of cross hairs of a gun on Gabrielle Giffords Congressional district as one where people should "reload" on the healthcare debate.

Several stories in major news outlets are detailing the statement and going more in-depth.

The Washington Post story had some relevant links, including the video, to previous stories if you want to follow the evolution of the coverage on this, which appears to be growing, and in my opinion, in a negative way for Palin. Her polls must be showing as much as there is great risk to her political future the more she responds to this.

Typically, p.r. types will tell public officials to stay away from a controversy and avoid being implicated by involvement in the discussion, but if the polls start showing its very negative, the strategy has to be to try to combat that.

Cross hair map below. At one point, an aid to Palin said they were not intending it be cross hairs at all, but that seemed to be refuted by Palin who earlier described the markers as "bull's-eyes"

There were apparently 10,000 comments on her Facebook page, not all of them positive.

Most interesting is the risk former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty took in implicitly criticizing the Palin cross hair map, which he says wouldn't be his "style," and he wouldn't have done it. His statement is here in the New York Times political blog.

His statement to them "“It’s not a device I would have chosen to do. Everybody has got their own style or different approaches,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “But I don’t want to have anyone infer that there’s evidence in this case that it caused or was a contributing factor. We don’t know that.”

In the most Minnesota nice way possible, he took a chance at gaining some ground on Palin politically. He could have defended her to the max, and he did defend here, but in a sort of damning with faint praise sort of way.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if there is a connection or not, if there is, it's even worse for Palin, but the fact that she has been part of the debate, no matter how much she tries to distance herself will be part of the narrative that develops.

And as much as the mainstream media has been very responsible and clear in not connecting her to the killer, people will think what they want to think, and they won't always listen to the mainstream media.