I appreciate Sarah Palin. I know sometimes you read that I’m somehow a critic of Palin’s, but truth be told, I love the lady. You can say all day that she doesn’t have the “intellectual curiosity” to be President — which is to Palin as “Cheney’s gravitas” was to Bush — but you cannot deny this woman is fundamentally conservative, Christian, and would be a heck of a lot better than the present guy in the White House. For all of you who deny her intellect, you cannot deny her gut is conservative. I appreciate that.She stood with Doug Hoffman when few others would and she stood with Rand Paul when few others would. I appreciate being able to stand side by side with her in those races. But she and I part ways in California.I get that she endorsed John McCain. She would not be where she was, but for McCain. And I get that she endorsed Fiorina. In addition to Fiorina being the McCain campaign chair, there is a desperate desire among Republicans to stop Tom Campbell. I get it.But I’m with Chuck DeVore and I refuse to yield in this fight. I’m not abandoning Chuck just because Sarah Palin had decided to go elsewhere. As much as I’d have loved her to get on board with Mike Lee in Utah and Marlin Stutzman in Indiana (hopefully she’ll go with Ken Buck in Colorado), we don’t always have to see eye to eye. Honestly, I’d rather be batting 1000 with Jim DeMint, who is in the Senate and knows what the Senate really needs. Right now I am batting that thousand. DeMint is with Chuck DeVore. So am I.So God bless Governor Palin. She and I can agree to disagree.I hope, though, that you might stick with Chuck DeVore. I believe in Chuck DeVore‘s campaign, which is unapologetically conservative. I think that this year is unlike so many other years — even a deaf and blind pig could beat Barbara Boxer. In this environment, we ought to go with the one candidate who does not view “conservative” as a four letter word.Now, there are some pro-life and pro-conservative women groups that have gone all in for Fiorina. Good for them. But there is only one candidate in the race who has actually stood up for the unborn and stood up for conservative women instead of laying them off. That’s Chuck DeVore.While we may be in an “anybody but Campbell” mood, consider these facts:

• Capitol Weekly / Probolsky poll recently showed Chuck and Carly in a statistical tie.
• Lewis Group poll of only Orange County GOP last week showed Chuck one point ahead of Carly. (I don’t want to make too much of this, but it’s a reasonable stand-in for the state party at large.)
• The latest Rasmussen hypotheticals vs Boxer had Campbell doing best, Chuck next, and Carly worst.
• Since Campbell’s entry, polling trend lines are: Campbell static, Fiorina in decline, Chuck rising. Chuck has gone from about 5% to the 15-20% range. Carly has gone from the 30-25% range to the just-below-20% range.

The bottom line from my perspective is that Chuck and Carly are intersecting as he goes up and she comes down. There will be a dogfight for second place, and whomever wins it will beat Campbell, who hit his ceiling of support on day one and hasn’t increased it one bit. I stand with Jim DeMint and I stand with Chuck DeVore. I hope you will too.