Sarah Palin will launch her national book tour next week, one part of a carefully crafted strategy that has allowed the former vice-presidential candidate to leapfrog traditional media outlets and appeal directly to her dedicated and vocal fan base. 
 
 The coming tour through small towns and midsize cities is designed mostly to maximize sales of "Going Rogue: An American Life," which will be formally released Nov. 17. But associates say it also serves as a reintroduction for Ms. Palin and a warm-up for what promises to be a starring role in next year's midterm elections and, if her supporters get their wish, the next presidential race. 
 
 Among the features of this new strategy: buying Internet advertising based on Google searches of her name, and using Facebook as a key means of communicating with voters. Her team also has considered filing libel suits against bloggers who spread rumors about her family. 
 
 Associated Press Sarah Palin emerged from two months out of the public view with a September speech in Hong Kong. Above, Ms. Palin at the Hong Kong airport. 
 
 Within its 413 pages, "Going Rogue" seeks to blame aides to Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain for many of Ms. Palin's worst media moments in the 2008 presidential campaign, such as her interview with CBS's Katie Couric, according to a copy of the book purchased from a bookstore by The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Palin complained that the network "systematically sliced out material that would accurately convey my message." A CBS spokeswoman said the interview "speaks for itself." 
 
 Since then, her political tactics have been unorthodox. Her August Facebook entry warning that President Barack Obama's health bill would create a "death panel" inspired "tea party" activists to crash congressional town hall meetings and moved public opinion against the White House. Her surprise resignation from the Alaska governorship during the July 4th weekend helped her dominate the news and drove heavy traffic to the Web site for SarahPAC, her political-action committee. 
 
 From 'Going Rogue: An American Life' On being interviewed by CBS's Katie Couric : "I have had better interviews…I choked on a couple of responses, and in the harried pace of the campaign, I mistakenly let myself become annoyed and frustrated with many of her repetitive, biased questions." 
 
 After Election Day: Ms. Palin assumed she would "go back to the job I loved. But what a difference ten weeks can make. Before my plane even touched down in Anchorage, shocking character assassinations of those I love had begun." 
 
 On being told by McCain aides that she couldn't speak on Election Night: "This isn't the way it's supposed to end, I thought. I walked toward the stage with just Todd and some of the kids, with a rolled-up speech in my hands that I wasn't going to give." 
 
 "She resigned as governor, still has all this power...and her book before it's even published is a best seller," said John Coale, a Washington lawyer who helped Ms. Palin devise her early strategy. "Going Rogue" is published by HarperCollins, a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal. 
 
 The official publicity for the book starts Monday with a conventional feel -- taped sit-downs with Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. 
 
 On Wednesday, starting in Grand Rapids, Mich., Ms. Palin will ride a bus adorned with large images of her face and start connecting with supporters in the kinds of places she once described as "real America." The tour takes her to Noblesville, Ind., Roanoke, Va., Washington, Pa., military bases at Fort Bragg and Fort Hood, and the Villages, a GOP-friendly retirement community outside Orlando, Fla. 
 
 News Hub: Palin Hopes for More Than a Best-Seller 1:56 With Sarah Palin's book hitting stores next week, WSJ's Peter Wallsten discusses whether it's part of a larger political strategy to boost her political base. He talks with Kelsey Hubbard and Simon Constable in the News Hub. 
 
 A number of Republican candidates for 2010 races are reaching out to Ms. Palin, hoping she can bring them political good fortune with an energized party base. Ms. Palin met for 30 minutes last week with Scott Walker, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin. 
 
 Mr. Walker said Ms. Palin offered no commitments, but made clear her intention to be present in next year's national campaign. 
 
 "What we said was she would bring a lot of excitement," Mr. Walker said, describing her ability to bring "a rally-like atmosphere for grassroots folks." 
 
 Discussion of Ms. Palin's Internet strategy among a core group of advisers began during the spring. One concern, said a consultant who was part of the talks, was her frequent appearance in unfavorable news articles and blog postings. 
 
 Associated Press 
 
 Ms. Palin was particularly angry at bloggers and the media, associates said, for speculation that her baby Trig was really the child of Bristol, her daughter. 
 
 At one point, according to people familiar with the discussions, Ms. Palin considered pursuing a libel suit against at least one blogger, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. Ms. Palin decided against such a move because of the publicity it would bring. 
 
 Mr. Sullivan, in response, said asking "factually verifiable questions is obviously not libel." 
 
 A spokeswoman for Ms. Palin didn't respond to email requests seeking comment. 
 
 Ms. Palin's resignation as governor gave her freedom to try to reshape her image. Her announcement sparked the biggest surge in Palin interest since the election, according to Google Insights, a service that ranks the popularity of online search terms. People conducting Internet searches were directed through online advertising to the Web site of her political action committee, which collected email addresses and donations. 
 
 A page on Facebook, the social-networking Web site, became Ms. Palin's main sounding board. Nearly one million people have "friended" her. The page is accessible to people who aren't Facebook members. 
 
 "Whereas most people think the Internet is the place you lose control of your message, they have almost complete control of their message," said a consultant who has worked with her. 
 
 —Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Peter Wallsten at peter.wallsten@wsj.com 
 
 Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A4 ||||| « Wikis Of The Week | Main | Does It Matter If Political Candidates Are Good-Looking? » 
 
 Sources with access to Palin have indeed told to me that the Wasilla whack-job was an obsessive reader of this blog as it dared to ask factual questions about her past that could be easily answered. I have no way of knowing this myself, and regard it as odd that a vice-presidential candidate would be hell-bent on suing a blogger who, presumably, was merely making a total ass of himself in wondering if Palin's surreal account of her last pregnancy was factually accurate. 
 
 Or is there something there - of some unknown sort - that she desperately wanted to intimidate and suppress? As Bubble would note: "Who can say?" What can Levi possibly mean that "she knows what I got on her?" 
 
 The MSM won't touch this, of course. 
 
 But here's the WSJ piece. Money quote: 
 
 Ms. Palin was particularly angry at bloggers and the media, associates said, for speculation that her baby Trig was really the child of Bristol, her daughter. At one point, according to people familiar with the discussions, Ms. Palin considered pursuing a libel suit against at least one blogger, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. Ms. Palin decided against such a move because of the publicity it would bring. Mr. Sullivan, in response, said asking "factually verifiable questions is obviously not libel." A spokeswoman for Ms. Palin didn't respond to email requests seeking comment. 
 
 And so the pattern of refusing to be accountable on anything continues.
– Back in the day, public figures were cautioned not to pick fights with people who bought ink by the barrel—namely, newspaper publishers. In the age of the blogger, it's more important to guard against fueling your antagonists with the 21st-century version of ink: attention. Paging Sarah Palin: "The Wasilla whack-job was an obsessive reader of this blog," crows Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic. Sullivan spent a good chunk of the 2008 campaign speculating that the mother of Palin's younger son, Trig, was actually her eldest daughter, Bristol—as he puts it, the blog "dared to ask factual questions about her past that could be easily answered." Palin "considered pursuing a libel suit against" Sullivan but decided not to "because of the publicity it would bring," the Wall Street Journal reports. Bullet dodged!