The Maddow Blog - Palin staffer explains why site disappeared

The Maddow Blog - Palin staffer explains why site disappeared

On Saturday, a Sarah Palin staffer told a conservative radio show why they removed Palin'sTakeBackthe20 website, screengrabbed above, in the hours after the Tucson shooting. Transcribing:

SARAHPAC's REBECCA MANSOUR: Here's the timeline for it. I'll just be completely honest. I believe the person that controls our website, our contractor that runs SarahPac.com and all that, they were the ones that hosted our Take Back the 20. We had thought that Take Back the 20 was taken down after the November election because it's irrelevant now.

HOST TAMMY BRUCE: Right.

REBECCA MANSOUR: And they called us this morning and said, Do you want us to take this thing down, because they realized, instantly, you know. . . [Note: Mansour trails off without completing this sentence.]

And I think just reflexively, without even thinking about any consequences, our PAC treasurer said, Well, it should have been down already. We're not paying for that, you know, and it's not getting any traffic. It's not, it's no longer relevant.

So it was taken down. It was not trying to scrub anything. The original Facebook post where we had this graphic is still up.

And I just want to clarify again. Maybe it wasn't done on the record enough by us when this graphic came out. The graphic is just -- we never, ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply crosshairs like you'd see on maps.

BRUCE: It's a surveyor's symbol.

MANSOUR: A surveyor's symbol.

BRUCE: Yeah.

The marks on Ms. Palin's map indicated the 20 congressional districts where voters supported McCain/Palin and Democratic representatives voted for health reform. If those marks are clearly surveyor's symbols, as Ms. Mansour said, why would the Web contractor have "realized, instantly" that SarahPac might want to take the website down? Perhaps the contractor had seen Ms. Palin's own interpretation of them on Twitter after the November elections: "Remember months ago "bullseye" icon used 2 target the 20 Obamacare-lovin' incumbent seats? We won 18 out of 20 (90% success rate;T'aint bad)"

And when Ms. Palin introduced the graphic and the Take Back the 20 campaign in March, shetweeted, "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Pls see my Facebook page."

The full interview lives here. The clip above starts at about 10:50. After the jump, the graphic as it appears on Sarah Palin's Facebook page.

As Ms. Mansour says, this graphic is still available on Sarah Palin's Facebook page.