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Sarah Palin's Mystery Bus Tour Keeps Rolling (We Guess)

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, visits a Civil War-era cemetery, Tuesday, May 31, 2011, at Gettysburg National Military Park.
Timothy Jacobsen
/
AP
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, visits a Civil War-era cemetery, Tuesday, May 31, 2011, at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Updated at 2:23 pm —CBS News reports that some journalists are worried that Sarah Palin's East Coast bus tour is creating a dangerous situation on the highways by not telling the news media beforehand about its planned stops.

Instead, journalists are having to trail her small motorcade bus from stop to stop. The response from Palin and her aides to journalists is, in a paraphrase, "tough."

-- original post below --

You decorate a bus with your name writ large, pump up the patriotic platitudes, head out on an "all-American road trip" and, by golly, you just can't understand what all the fuss is about.

Sarah Palin is two days into her "One Nation"-but-not-a-presidential-campaign bus tour, and the unsuccessful 2008 GOP candidate for vice president continued to give the media the slip Tuesday, checking in at the Gettysburg National Military Park on her , then coffee in Pennsylvania, but giving no hint of her next stop. The Liberty Bell?

The former half-term Alaska governor's latest "rogue" attention-grab has delighted her fans. One of the discussion groups on her Facebook page is titled "Keep the Press Guessing."

There, a loyalist by the name of Bill Taylor declared Palin's mystery tour "another example of her sheer brilliance," and evidence of her continuing challenge to the "lame stream media."

But make no mistake, Palin says, the tour is "not about me, it's not a publicity-seeking tour." Palin, on the payroll at Fox News, told this to Fox News show host Greta Van Susteren, who is the only lame/mainstream media person with access to her colleague.

While Palin and family work the Eastern Seaboard, other GOP presidential hopefuls worked more traditional political ground, in places where early primary and caucus voters will help set the trajectory of candidates working for the party's nomination.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul was in Iowa. As was former two-term Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, scheduled to give a lecture at the American Future Fund's Conservative Lecture series.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had three events on hit agenda in New Hampshire. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who continues to insist he is not interested in running for the GOP nomination, has a meeting scheduled with big-money Republicans from Iowa who are bent on changing his mind.

No events scheduled today for expected candidates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

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Liz Halloran joined NPR in December 2008 as Washington correspondent for Digital News, taking her print journalism career into the online news world.