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Much of the upcoming documentary on Sarah Palin, “The Undefeated,” which First Read screened yesterday, is unsurprising. It portrays her reforms in Alaska as heroic, it paints her as a victim of Hollywood liberals and the media (though not as many shots at the media as we expected), and it elevates her as the leader of the Tea Party movement. In short, Palin supporters will love it; Democrats won’t. But the most striking part of the film is its attack on the Republican establishment. “To hell to the establishment,” says conservative activist Andrew Breitbart near the end of the movie. Then come pictures of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Eric Cantor. Breitbart’s beef with the GOP establishment: It didn’t defend Palin from the attacks she received after the ’08 campaign. “I see eunuchs,” he added in the "CODA" of the nearly two-hour movie. (Yes, he said eunuchs, we'll refrain from the obvious Weiner reference, but we digress…)

In fact, the film compares the GOP establishment’s attitude toward Palin to how it received Ronald Reagan’s primary challenge against Gerald Ford in 1976. Conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon, who made “The Undefeated,” said in an interview with reporters after the screening that he believes the Republican Party and conservative movement need another 1976. And: “It’s very important for [Palin’s] voice to be in it.” Indeed, Bannon said that the Palin documentary is “the story of a woman who always goes up against the establishment” -- whether it the Alaska establishment, the Democratic establishment, the media establishment, or the GOP establishment. Of course, the potential implication here is that Tea Party supporters still want a fight -- in 2012 -- against the GOP establishment. Bannon is most animated about starting this fight inside the party. Asked whether he wants Palin to run outside the party in some third-party capacity, he quickly ruled that out. Instead, he reinforced his belief -- says he's channeling talk radio host Mark Levin, who appears in the movie as well -- about this need for the conservative movement to have another 1976 moment.

AMC on July 15. And his hope is that strong ticket sales during the limited release will lead to a larger pick-up across the country throughout July and August. It's in the hands of movie-goers to see what kind of interest the movie sparks before AMC decides on a wider release. Back to the plot of the movie… Perhaps the biggest contradiction in the movie: It hails her bipartisan accomplishments in Alaska (on ethics reform, the budget, and key oil and gas measures), but then transitions to her no-holds-barred rhetoric against Democrats and President Obama. As the Atlantic Monthly's Josh Green recently wrote, "Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska." The movie plays down significantly that she worked more with Democrats in Alaska than many inside the Republican Party.

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