WASILLA, Alaska — About 70 miles up the road from Sarah Palin’s home on Lake Lucille, there’s a propane, gift and souvenir store set behind a snowbank where Mike Carpenter, the owner, will turn on Newsmax, smoke a Winston White and say this about the state’s celebrity former governor: “One way you might describe Sarah Palin is she knows which bathroom to use.”
When she announced her run for Congress on the April 1 filing deadline, he said to himself, “Thank God.”