Saturday, October 16, 2010

Argo Journal Essential Reads: Sarah Palin

Palin to rally Republicans in Calif. stronghold

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will rally Republicans in a conservative stronghold in Southern California even though a recent poll showed she is unpopular in the state.

The former vice presidential candidate will address supporters at a Republican National Committee event in Orange County on Saturday.

A recent Field Poll showed 58 percent of California's registered voters held a negative view of Palin, though she remains popular with Republicans.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Senate challenger Carly Fiorina, who need support from independent voters to win their races, will skip the RNC event.
Palin: Nov. 2 elections are about 'the little guy'

Looking ahead to next month's midterm elections, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday that the country needs to elect business-minded candidates who will not sell out their principles for the sake of bipartisanship.

"This election is about the little guy, the common man, independence, and the middle class — those forgotten and ignored for far too long, and now they're fighting back," Palin said. "They — we — are saying enough is enough."


"We want those business-oriented folks in Washington not to be there singing 'Kumbaya' with the people who caused the problems in the first place," she said.
This brew just can't last
In this crazy election year, the tea partyers have shown surprising strength. But the internal contradictions are so numerous, it's hard to see how their influence will last.
by Tim Rutten

If you simply go down the list of tea party candidates for the House and Senate, you can find four who want to repeal either or both the 16th and 17th Amendments, which provide for a progressive income tax and popular election of U.S. senators. Eight want to abolish whole federal departments and agencies, including Energy, Education, the Internal Revenue Service, Commerce and Homeland Security. One wants an end to everything except the departments of State, Justice and the Treasury. Many of these tea-party-backed office-seekers urge privatization of Social Security and Medicare. In the Bay Area's 11th Congressional District, the front-running Republican candidate has argued for the abolition of public education because it's "socialistic." At least three candidates are such programmatic libertarians that they'd really be more at home in that party.

The problem, as political analyst and George Mason University professor Bill Schneider has pointed out, is that it's "not just that tea partyers are anti-government.... They are anti-politics. They believe that politics is essentially corrupt — that deal-making and compromise are an abandonment of principle. The tea party is a political fundamentalist movement. Like religious fundamentalists, its members do not tolerate waverers (like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah). They drive out heretics (like Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida). They punish unbelievers (like Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware). And they believe in the total inerrancy of scripture — in this case, the U.S. Constitution as originally written in 1787."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's epoch-changing New Deal coalition survived only so long as its constituent groups agreed not to discuss the one difference between them they could not reconcile — race. When the civil rights movement made that silent, and shabby, accommodation impossible, the coalition shattered.

The tea party's internal contradictions are so numerous, it's difficult to see its coalition of discontent surviving a single Congress.
Sarah Palin finds a receptive crowd of conservatives in heavily Democratic San Jose

Palin, the conservative icon and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, first drew cheers by saluting the San Francisco Giants, then said she was delighted to be in a "state that puts a mama grizzly on its flag."

Appearing at the downtown Center for the Performing Arts -- her first visit to San Jose and first public event in the Bay Area -- Palin rallied the faithful to dump the Democrats and elect candidates who embrace the conservative values of lower taxes, less spending and smaller government.

"Are you ready to take it back," she asked, "and put government back on the side of the little guy and have government work for you instead of you having to work for government?"


Speaking in a rapid-fire, sometimes chirpy voice, Palin parodied "Saturday Night Live" by saying, "Nov. 2 is right around the corner. I can see it from my house!"

Palin, who last year resigned as Alaska governor with 18 months left in her first term, attacked "Obamacare," President Barack Obama's landmark heath reform package, as "the mother of all unfunded mandates." And she assailed the 2009 stimulus bill and all the "shovel-ready projects" it was supposed to fund.

"Now we know what they were shoveling, and it wasn't asphalt," she quipped.


People in the crowd shouted in agreement. When one man hollered, "Throw the bums out!" Palin replied, "Amen, brother. You betcha."

In a speech tailored to California interests, Palin also lambasted the cutoff of water affecting millions of state residents because of "a 2-inch fish," the threatened delta smelt.

"Where I come from," she said, "we call that bait."
Sarah Palin speaks in San Jose

For someone widely credited with helping to shape the Republican field in the midterm elections, it was curious who didn't appear with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Thursday when she spoke to a wildly enthusiastic audience in San Jose: Any major Republican Party candidates.

Or any Republican candidates at all, for that matter.

With husband Todd standing offstage - he'd just driven the family motor home down from Alaska - it was Palin's first stop in her three-city swing through California over the next few days, a pilgrimage that appears designed both to raise her political profile, in preparation for a possible 2012 presidential run, and enthusiasm for GOP candidates.

Not that she mentioned any Republicans by name Tuesday. Not even Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina, endorsed by Palin last spring in California's GOP primary. Fiorina and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (who Palin has not endorsed) were invited to attend Thursday, but declined, said event spokesman J.D. Gordon, because of scheduling conflicts. Neither is expected to join Palin in Sacramento today or Anaheim on Saturday.

Analysts say many Republicans candidates - particularly those in blue states like California - don't know quite what the Palin effect is yet. They don't want to alienate her and her rabid followers by shunning her, but they don't want to risk alienating undecided moderate voters by linking arms with her either.
Jesse Ventura’s ‘Theory’ On Sarah Palin: ‘She’s A Quitter’

Let’s talk politics, Governor, because it’s an election season, and a pretty dramatic one so far, due in part to the Tea Party movement. Is it accurate to say that you still follow politics pretty avidly?

Oh, God, yes. I have to doing this show. I’ll put it to you this way about the Tea Party: Anybody that would put Sarah Palin to the top of their list will never get me. She’s a quitter.

You’re not a fan of hers. Why – because she quit her job?
You’re damn right. She quit in the middle of her term. That’s the contract you have with the voters.

Did you feel differently about her before she quit?

Well, I felt she was completely unqualified. I had more qualifications than she did. I had served as a mayor of a town [Brooklyn Park, Minn.] of 60,000 – hers [Wasilla, Alaska] was 10,000. I had served as governor for two years when everybody wanted me to run for president in 2000, and I said I’m not prepared to be the president. I haven’t even completed office as a governor yet. Now, she never completed her office as governor. She didn’t even get two years in hardly! And she quit to get money. Jesus, how do people not see that! She saw greener pastures, said, Screw the people of Alaska, and went on to collect.

Maybe you can do an episode of ‘Conspiracy Theory’ about her.

I wouldn’t waste my time.
Sarah Palin and 'permanent residents of a unicorn ranch in fantasy land'



Palin Takes Cheap Shot at Michelle Obama



Get Your First Look at Sarah Palin's Alaska

'Sarah Palin's Alaska' may be 'flippin' fun,' but will it be any good?
The trailer for TLC's upcoming show, 'Sarah Palin's Alaska,' is out, featuring themes of family, fun, and freedom. It functions well as a political ad, too.

1 comment:

Pablo said...

That was horrifying. Lol. I like the idea of the Argo Journal Essential Reads, though. Nice.