Owlscourt

The Republican candidate in the 2008 US presidential election unleashed upon America a rightwing zealot who overshadowed him like a total solar eclipse. America voted against the Republican slate by a margin large enough to escape court challenges or Supreme Court rulings. But the beauty queen zealot he jettisoned as she rocketed to fame has continued to turn up like the proverbial bad penny since the ticket lost the election.

The turkey pardon with slaughter as a background a week before Thanksgiving was caught by a local TV station and became an immediate mainstream sensation, as well as an instant YouTube hit. That media mishap came a week after the former vice-presidential candidate's resounding success at the demoralized Republican Governor's meeting in Miami within two weeks of the election.

Touted as the new face of the Republican party, the current Alaskan governor downplayed the celebrity she had fueled with interviews on NBC, Fox News and CNN during the previous week, according to the New York Times. The answers to challenges in the areas of developing energy resources and health care reform were not for the government to step in and take over, she said in a week in which the government was doing just that with a $700 million bailout. "Heaven forbid!" she added as Minnesota's Governor Tim Pawlenty pointed out the Republican deficit in every region of the country and in every voting group, including among minorities, people with limited income and women.

Even so, by the weekend following the unfortunate turkey shoot, the new Republican star was featured in an AOL News item on her "celebrity status still on the rise." Oprah wanted her, so did Jay Leno and Letterman. The William Morris Agency had been in touch. She could do an interview with any news agency on the planet, her spokesperson was quoted as saying.

The flood of media offers was unconfirmed. The Anchorage Daily News, however, chided the governor for carrying on national activities while state issues needed the leader's attention, including in the areas of education and plummeting oil prices.

The superstar who shot to fame because of the maverick Republican running for election in the 2008 campaign is not about to go away. She has stated an interest in running for presidency in 2012. The lure of the big time beyond Alaska is apparently compelling.

Meanwhile, another matter closer to home than Alaskan state affairs remains in the balance. That was the stunning revelation of a faith-based conservative that her unmarried teenage daughter was pregnant.

Preempted from scandal by presenting the development as a mistake with which any family could empathize, a marriage of the two teens was part of the announcement. That was no doubt mandatory, given that the religious right was being courted for a sure-fire win as had supposedly been engineered four years earlier by the current Republican administration.

Just before the election, the wedding was announced as planned for spring after the expected birth of the child in December. The father-to-be said at the time that the candidate had to win. She was his future mother-in-law.

That wedding could be the bell-weather of the current Republican star's political future. If the wedding does take place, it can be a sure sign that the new celebrity does intend to pursue the higher aims that the 2008 US presidential election opened up for her.

Helen Fogarassy is a New York based internationalist writer who has worked on a contract basis with the United Nations for nearly 20 years. She is the author of a suspense novel, The Midas Maze, about murderous hijinks in UN/US relations. She is also the author of The Light of a Destiny Dark, a novel about the Euro-American cultural gap through Hungarian eyes, and a nonfiction eyewitness tribute to the UN's work, Mission Improbable: The World Community on a UN Compound in Somalia. All are available on the major web bookstore sites. E-mail her at helfog @ aol.com