Fact Check: Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue'

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Sarah Palin takes on the media, the McCain campaign and her critics in her new book "Going Rogue." But will her criticisms pass a fact check?

In her book, Palin says McCain's campaign chair chewed her out after she was fooled by that fake phone call from a morning radio DJ.

In her book, Palin says Steve Schmidt called and the force of his screaming blew her hair back, saying "How can anyone be so stupid?"

But campaign staffers tell ABC News, Schmidt only sent an e-mail asking, "Who set this up? Are you kidding me?"

On her decision to appear on Saturday Night Live, Palin says she was all for it. Her attitude was supposedly, "Let's go on and neutralize some of this and have some fun."

But in an e-mail she sent to the campaign before the show she said, "These folks are whack&what's the upside in giving them or any celebrity venue a ratings boost?"

The book says President Ronald Reagan had to deal with a worse recession and showed us how to get out of one -- if you want real job growth cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all.

But the Reagan era recession lasted 16 months; the current recession is 23 months and counting.

And under Mr. Reagan, capital gains taxes were higher and the estate tax was not repealed.

Palin describes Alaska as a haven for independent Americans who do not want help from Washington busybodies, but Alaska is one of the states most dependent on government help. For every tax dollar sent to Washington, Alaska gets back $1.84. California gets 80 cents.

Palin says in the book she wishes she had made more of Obama's close relationship with ACORN, but adds, "We did not elaborate on any of that during the campaign."

But in the third and final presidential debate, John McCain said, "We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in the is country maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

"She's getting even with people in the media who she thinks treated her poorly, she's getting even with the McCain campaign, which obviously she feels didn't treat her very well also, and she's reaching out to her base and that, I think, is the key to understand this book and understanding what it's all about," Republican political consultant and Stanford University Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen said.

The factual errors from the 400-page book were compiled mostly by the Associated Press, which was given an advanced copy of "Going Rogue." The ACORN quote was pointed out by Media Matters, a web-based, left-leaning group.

Some conservative commentators are complaining about the media fact checks, saying they are proof an anti-Palin bias.

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barack obama, john mccain, sarah palin, politics, mark matthews

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