I was walking through the grocery store earlier today when I received a text message from a close friend asking me if I had taken note of the change on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. I confessed that it had been an exceptionally busy day and that I had not looked at Palin’s page today. My friend then brought to my attention that under the “Info” link, Palin’s political views have been changed from “Republican” to “Conservative”. For a brief moment, it didn’t phase me as I am also a registered Republican but I chose to list “Conservative” on my Facebook page as my own political view because in my eyes, it more aptly describes my values.
I suppose one could draw a multitude of conclusions regarding this status change. I know that I certainly have. You can be certain that any move Sarah Palin makes has been well thought out and is with purpose. Could she possibly be sending a message to the RNC that they need to strengthen the conservative planks of the Republican party? Perhaps her promise of “sudden and relentless reform” as addressed in her Indianola speech and more recently in her October 7th St. Louis speech is a sign that as in the past, neither party is safe from her scrunity.
One thing is for sure, time will tell.

UPDATE:
Upon further investigation this change may be a function of Facebook’s recent layout changes. Old screen shots show both a “party” line and a “political views” line. This screen shot clearly shows both fields:

Since Google and Yahoo do their jobs so well, a search of cached pages yielded very recent caches of 10/12/11 and 10/10/11 respectively with those pages showing just “Conservative”. In checking my own page, there is an option for “Conservative Republican”; however, I have a regular individual page and Palin’s page type with over 3.2 million “likes” may not offer the same options.
While I have always known that Sarah Palin is, without a doubt, “conservative”, there are numerous people tweeting that they too recall the “Republican” designation as noted above. I would like to include links to some of these Tweets but it appears that this topic has “broken” Twitter as I am getting their infamous “whale fail” over and over. I will add another update as soon as possible with a few of those tweets.
Update 2
Tweets from Palin supporters confirming “Republican” designation here, here, and here.
Update 3
It seems that this entry was picked up by another site and the blogger initially added some additional speculation by commenting on a 3rd party run; however, the blog entry has gone through so many edits that it’s no longer there and no, I don’t have a screenshot of that either. I’d lke to point out that (1) based upon a friend’s observation and my own recollection of looking at the info page last month as well as the recollection of numerous Palin supporters, it’s clear that “Republican” has been listed although it was, in the past, paired with “Conservative”. (2) The observations stated in my original entry (strengthening the planks of the Republican party and Palin’s scrunity of both political parties) are consistent with Governor Palin’s record and her message when announcing not to make a run for president in the 2012 election cycle on Mark Levin’s October 5th show. .
Cross posted to Sarah Palin Blog