Sarah Palin didn’t mention whether she could see Wisconsin from her home in Wasilla, Alaska last night nor which of “all” those newspapers she reads gave her the insights into the results of Governor Scott Walker’s victory last night but when BFF Van Susteren kept (gently) suggesting Palin got it wrong, that said a lot about just how outlandish they were.
Palin was Van Susteren’s first guest on On The Record last night, which aired shortly after the recall results had been officially announced. So, she was presented as having some major cred on the issue. But Van Susteren’s comments kept hinting otherwise.
For example, here’s Palin’s answer to Van Susteren’s question about how Walker should go about reconciling and healing the wounds from the recall process. In essence, Palin prescribes that Walker not change a thing and keep up the divisiveness while he’s at it.
He keeps on keeping on. He keeps showing through facts, through stats, through the numbers that they don’t lie, that removing deficit spending and allowing a deficit to turn into a surplus, allowing the government to rein itself in via legislative and policy measures so that the private sector can grow. Those numbers don’t lie. And he needs to reminding the public of that.
He also maybe — maybe not him, but somebody could encourage our good union brothers and sisters there in Wisconsin — and I say it as a former IBEW sister and my husband as a steelworker and IBEW brother — that maybe it’s the union leadership there, those thugs who wanted to deceive their members into believing that growing government was the answer.
Well, perhaps it’s those union leaders that need to be recalled and replaced with those who understand what perhaps a union role could be in state government, not a selfish role, not a role that allows government to continue to grow and create an insolvent situation for a state.
Van Susteren knew what Palin may have missed or forgotten in all that newspaper reading she does: that Walker, himself, has said that he regretted not doing a better job of managing the politics.
You know, it’s interesting. We’ve spoken to him before the - you know, last year during the protests, and we’ve spoken to the governor a number of times since. And I asked him, you know, what he would have done differently. And while he doesn’t — he doesn’t back off his policies, he says that he wished he had been perhaps better communicating his message so that there would not be this deep divide.
...Do you agree that there’s a better way or that he could have delivered his message better so that perhaps he could have avoided, maybe this recall vote?
In short, no. Palin’s answer was to blame the “radical left” even further and then forecast unity once Walker steamrolls them:
I think that everything that Wisconsin has gone through in the last couple of years, Greta, with the lawmakers skipping town, not doing their job and hiding out in another state - the Democrats, 'cause they didn’t want to face what Governor Walker was proposing… I think Wisconsin voters are sick and tired of the division that’s been caused by the radical left, again, saying that it’s big government growth that’s going to be the answer to economic challenges.
And I think that the people there will come together and they’ll continue now to lead the country in these measures that are just common sense. It’s economics 101. You know, you live within your means. You’re fiscally responsible and that’s how you will become economically successful in a state, in a business, in our nation.
I think, naturally, this unity is going to happen under this good governor and lieutenant governor’s watch.
Van Susteren also asked Palin about President Obama being a “no show” in the recall campaign. As if Van Susteren didn’t know that this would unleash a torrent of anti-Obama invective from Palin. But maybe Van Susteren didn’t expect Palin’s ridiculous assessment that Obama’s absence from the campaign means his “goose is cooked.”
I think that the Democrats there understand that the president’s no show represents the fact that Obama’s goose is cooked as more and more Americans realize that what Wisconsin has just manifested, via this vote, embracing austerity and fiscal responsibility, is the complete opposite of what President Obama and the White House represents today.
They want to grow government. They want to take more away from the private sector. They want to quash that entrepreneurial spirit and resource development opportunities from America, so that a centralized, growing government will take the private sector’s place.
Well, Wisconsin wasn’t gonna put up with that. The rest of the nation won’t put up with that. So Obama did have to distance himself from the solutions that Walker and Kleefisch and their administration represented. He had to stay away.
Of course, most political analysts have said that it would have been a no-win situation for Obama to campaign on behalf of the recall in Wisconsin. That was another fact that Van Susteren thought it important to point out to her viewers.
…(O)ne thing that did happen in this state, though, is President Obama didn’t appear here, but President Bill Clinton did, still a big favorite among Democrats. He was here trying to, he was campaigning for the mayor on Friday.
Did his presence here show up President Obama? Or do you think President Obama sent him and the Democrats understand that this is politics and it probably wouldn’t be good for the president to be connected to a losing race?
Later, Palin (she really must be a voracious reader!) pronounced Obama not just the loser of the 2012 election but an immoral lawbreaker who violated the Constitution.
I think the general consensus is President Obama has us on the wrong track. The numbers don’t lie. As you are suggesting, the trend continues that is putting our economy in the hole. And there’s no plan to dig us out of the hole via Obama’s administration.
We still don’t have a budget three years later. He’s not leading us to even have a federal budget that — you know, to me it's immoral. It’s unethical. It violates the Constitution.
And no, I think people are going to say, OK, enough is enough of this hope-y change-y stuff that was nebulous, it was fake, it was hypocritical, and we’re ready to go in a different direction with a new leader of America.
Once again, Van Susteren contradicted. “…Well, I’ve been around the block and always surprised, you know, how things turn out. A lot can happen between now and November with that trend. Right now, it doesn’t look good for the president in terms of the trend itself, but it’s six—you know, it’s five or six months off from now. And I don’t know what the trend is going to be.”
Whether these comments indicate that Palin has fallen from grace in her (former?) devotee’s eyes remains to be seen. One thing is for sure: when Greta Van Susteren starts contradicting Palin – no matter how tactfully – you know it’s a sign that plenty of others at Fox are not taking her very seriously.
“All the Palin kids put themselves through College.”
All except Bristol, who got knocked up at 18 {while unmarried}, and currently deep into her career as a reality-TV star . . .
— “If Bush had a kill list, it would be 24/7 nonstop criticism.”
Dumbya had a kill list — he just wasn’t any good at taking care of any of the tasks on it . . .
—
“Wonder if Corzine will ever be able to find that billion at MLF.”
Wonder if Cheney ever found that $9 that went missing in Iraq . . .
—
“Iâll be back when SCOTUS declares Obamacare unconstitutional”
I have no doubt you’ll be back — under a different sockpuppet name, of course.
But, you should know, SCOTUS in matters like these usually refers to State decisions — and a couple of State SC’s have already ruled AHCA constitutional . . . so, you may not be back after all . . .
.
What do you believe John Corzine has to do with the Obama Administration? He was a Democratic figure from a few years ago, and by all accounts, he mismanaged MF Global. And I thought I read a couple of weeks ago that at least some of the funds have been located. But what does that have to do with President Obama?
As for Solyndra, this was a project that both GOP and Dem politicians wanted to support. It had all the signs of being a good company with good prospects and it provided good photo ops for everyone about supporting solar energy. When it went under, it just became another casualty in the list of potential plusses that went under. This happens in business all the time.
As for why Obama didn’t go to Wisconsin, it’s pretty clear that he didn’t personally support the recall. He was willing to make a quieter statement on Twitter in support of Barrett, but he clearly wanted nothing to do with making a big show in support of the recall. Had he done so, the GOP pundits would have attacked him for injecting himself into a local matter, and in the event of it not going through he would have looked extremely foolish during a presidential campaign. By staying out of it, he certainly ticked off the people who wanted him to jump in, but also avoided the mess of having them try to tie the matter to him.
As for progressive opposition to President Obama’s military policies and drone strikes, I have to ask you Lynn, are you familiar with Democracy Now? The left-wing antiwar movement has been openly critical of Obama’s actions since he took office. There are regular denunciations of him on Pacifica Radio and at multiple left-wing sites that describe him as just as bad or worse than Bush. Not sure where you’re finding anti-war activists giving him a pass on drone killings. Unless you just mean MSNBC, which is not really left – it’s a center Democrat channel which mostly cheerleads Dems but occasionally has some good points to make in opposition to Fox.
As for the “liberal reprobates” marching on Madison last year, those were teachers, students and union workers who were understandably upset at Walker’s sudden attack on them. Keep in mind that the unions had already agreed to Walker’s angry demands for cuts to their pensions, and that they had already gone for years without pay raises. They had already pitched in to help the state out of the deficit Walker was expanding to justify his actions. It was only when Walker, pursuing a Machiavellian “Divide and Conquer” strategy told the non-police or firefighter public employee unions that he would strip them of their collective bargaining rights and effectively nullify their existence that they became upset enough to properly voice their reaction to their elected representatives. This does not make them reprobates – it makes them concerned and in many cases very angry citizens.
The only thing that stopped the GOP Wisconsin state legislature from ramming this destruct order through the system in seconds was that the Dems took the only defensive move they could – they denied the GOP the quorum they wanted to yell for the vote. The intent by the GOP to destroy the unions was clarified in the one vote we publicly saw where a Democrat tried to raise the question of what was happening only to be viciously cut off by a group of openly infuriated GOP legislators who immediately voted without discussion over the Dem’s repeated insistence that they were doing something improper. They then adjourned and stomped out of the room without engaging in any of the discussion that the GOP minority in Congress spent the entirety of 2 years from 2009-2011 doing to obstruct Obama. And if we somehow see a big majority of GOP in the House and Senate anytime soon, be ready for a repeat of this kind of bad behavior.
Lynn, if you’re concerned about the press not reporting on Obama with the same scorn you feel was placed on Sarah Palin, then perhaps you didn’t notice the press having a field day with all the birther rumors both during the 2008 campaign and ever since. Perhaps you didn’t notice the press carping on Obama and Biden for the “Beer Summit”. Perhaps you didn’t notice that the press tends to enjoy a scandal wherever they can find it. Ignoring when the press covers a Dem scandal does not mean it wasn’t covered. And no, it’s not the same thing to cover a scandal as it is to give free publicity to the kind of hate books being peddled by Ed Klein and David Limbaugh.
As for Palin, it is true that she stood up to some corruption in Alaska politics, including making a public statement by resigning a position once. But you forget that she had her own corruption issues going once she was in power as Governor, and that she wound up fleeing her office rather than answering the multiple charges that were being raised against her and her staff. I don’t recall Barack Obama quitting his office and refusing to answer corruption charges about lavish and secret personal spending on the public dime. But perhaps you can enlighten us on this subject.
If you wish to discuss the stimulus, you can look up many, many reports to see the various effects it has had. You are aware that a big part of it was the tax cuts, right? And you are aware that many, many employees were able to keep their jobs rather than lose them as would have happened, right? You are aware that much of what the stimulus did was to keep the damage from being worse than it has been? If anything, the stimulus was too small to any more than this. Critics on the left made clear at the time that a much larger stimulus was needed if we were going to get the unemployment rate farther down and keep the economy moving – but it was clear that this could not get through a Congress with complete GOP opposition to all things Obama and a situation where every single Democrat would have had to vote for it. (This is what puts the lie to the idea that the Dems “had total control” for two years – the fact is that the GOP was voting in total lockstep as a “NO!” to everything, and the Dems don’t vote like that. The “total control” idea assumes that the Dems all vote like sheep for one idea, and they don’t.)
As for the tea party, you do understand that while there were plenty of grassroots people angry to see some companies get bailed out (much of which happened under Bush), there was also organized big-money support coming in from the right? You do understand that the real origin of this movement was another wing of total opposition to all things Obama and a way of providing a rallying cry?
What new information do you have other than your anger and bitterness at this President? Or do you just want to repeat Rush Limbaugh’s opinions and the late Andrew Breitbart’s smears?
And then you bring up an editorial mistake that a publisher has already admitted? That, in the face of President Obama repeatedly being insulted and chased with the fiction of him being born somewhere elsewhere than he was? Have we ever had a sitting president repeatedly challenged to reveal more and more birth certificate information when the facts are extant? Again, take your time coming up with a reasonable justification for these slanders.
Then you raise the slanders being thrown around in a new article for the National Review by Stanley Kurtz, a man known for his attack book on Obama: “Radical in Chief”. Did you actually read what he’s presenting as “proof”? The historical record shows that while Obama was a local politician in Chicago, and leaning leftward as a community organizer, he reached out to many organizations and people for support. That doesn’t mean he joined this particular organization, whether or not someone there wishes he did. He would certainly have voiced sympathies to them, just as he said to people who wanted Single Payer healthcare that he agreed but felt he couldn’t get it through at this time. (I disagreed with him on that one, but that’s another story) The New Party story is just another repeat of the 2008 GOP attacks on him. The only thing that Kurtz has found is some documents that indicate wishful thinking on the part of New Party members – and keep in mind this is a group that was notoriously volatile in their own disagreements with each other, and which disintegrated in the late 90s. What in the world does this have to do with a President who discussed all this back in 2008 and is on the verge of not his first, but his SECOND presidential term? Again, take a minute to compose yourself and think about your response before posting it.
To the last, I actually agree with you that I hope things do change with the next term. I hope that the GOP members, knowing that Obama will not be running for another term, will put aside their hostility and try to work together with the Dems for the good of the country. Their partisan obstructionism hasn’t pushed the country over the cliff, but it hasn’t helped engender any confidence in our economy and if anything, it’s made the lives of people looking for work a little harder. One hopes that the GOP firebrands will have learned their lesson by next year and will do the right thing for themselves and for the country.
And it’s interesting that you want to discuss George Soros. He’s a liberal-leaning billionaire who funds causes he believes in. I take it you don’t want him to do that. Does this mean that you therefore also believe that the Koch brothers and Newt Gingrich’s Las Vegas backer should also stay out of politics? Or do you only want the money people who agree with you to be involved?
And while we’re on this subject, if you believe that the recall of Scott Walker was not justified by his attack on the public employee unions in Wisconsin, do you also believe that the right wing recall of Gray Davis in California in 2003 was not justified? And before you make the comment about how bad the unions are, are you aware that any union member has the ability to prevent the union from using their dues for political purposes? The whole argument about people having to support a union’s political activities is a right wing canard that flies in the face of labor law as set by the Supreme Court. You are aware of that, aren’t you?
As for this “vetting” of President Obama, it’s complete nonsense. All of these various silly charges about Jeremiah Wright, or what Obama did in high school, were all discussed back in 2008, and easily dismissed. You must have forgotten John McCain trying to bring up Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright in the debates, only to have Obama bat the allegations away without blinking an eye. You must have forgotten Rush Limbaugh and multiple right wing pundits poring over Obama’s books looking for good attack material, and Limbaugh repeatedly describing “Barry” Obama as a drug dealer. The American public heard all that and saw it for what it was – cheap partisan attacks borne from hatred, not from any kind of reasoned basis.
The Tony Rezko nonsense was dismissed back then as well, but that’s a nice try in bringing up that the Obamas bought an additional lot of property to attach to their house at one point. What does this have to do with anything? When you look at the situation, there’s not even smoke there.
And nobody other than a right wing crank has ever said that Obama had anything to do with Rod Blagojevich’s antics in office.
This is the same kind of witch hunting that the GOP pundits did when Vince Foster killed himself in the 1990s and you had Rush Limbaugh saying that he was murdered by the Clinton White House. (Remember the whole “his body was moved” nonsense?) Or that Whitewater was going to be the scandal that broke the Clintons?
The fact here is that Mitt Romney has a very serious uphill battle to fight. He’s trying to oppose a popular president and he hasn’t proposed any policies that would appeal to anyone. Partly because his actual governance of Massachusetts was similar to Obama’s federal policies. And Romney has run over to the far right in order to get those votes. So what’s Romney going to do after the convention? Run to the center and lose the right wing voters who already don’t trust him and who repeatedly voted for any other primary candidate than him? Or will he remain on the far right and alienate all the independent voters who Dick Morris mistakenly believes will all automatically vote for him? Not a pretty scenario for him, and that’s before he has to debate Obama in public – a skill that even Obama’s critics admit is one that Obama has over him in a big way.
And the criticism now of Obama is that we didn’t create enough jobs over the last two months? Think about that. Didn’t create enough jobs. But still created over 60,000 jobs. Anemic, yes. Certainly not helped by businesses sitting on the fence and not spending money here in the states. Certainly not helped by the GOP trying to lock up spending here in the guise of reigning in deficits. Certainly not helped by state and federal government agencies regularly laying people off right and left. But still creating jobs and trying to move forward. That’s a big difference from where we were when Obama came into office, and we were LOSING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF JOBS EVERY MONTH. And Romney has publicly stated that he would not have taken the steps that Obama did to stop the freefall. Meaning that we’d still be in that freefall, or close to the bottom of the chasm now, had Romney been president the past three years.
The one thing Newt Gingrich said correctly in his campaign was to point out that Mitt Romney’s claims of being a businessman first and not a Washington politician doesn’t wash with his lifelong political ambitions. Romney made business contacts due to his father’s political influence, and at his first opportunity, tried to run for major public office – failing spectacularly to unseat Teddy Kennedy in the 1990s. Having missed at that, he eventually ran for Governor as a precursor to a Presidential run. We’ll see what the fall brings, but it’s not likely to result in Mitt Romney doing anything different than he was doing in January of 2009 come that time next year.
That’s funny: I seem to recall the same thing being said after both the VA and NJ GOP gubenatorial wins and Scott Brown’s MA Senatorial Special Election win back in 2009 . . . and whaddaya know — Barack Obama was still the US President the day afterward back then, and is now . . .
“I think the general consensus is President Obama has us on the wrong track. The numbers donât lie.”
What numbers are those, Lady Blah Blah? The numbers that have Obama beating Mitt Romney by double digits in Iowa?
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/05/08/poll-itics-president-obama-beating-mitt-romney-by-double-digits-in-iowa/
I did so well after half a term I decided to quit and make some real dough with Fux Nuze. At Fux I kin run our country lots better ‘cause I get lots more folks tunin’ in ta see ma latest makeover. I’m employin’ lots of people ta make ma image look gooder – I’m a job-creator!
In some ways, Walker winning is a good thing, because could you imagine the Republicans trying to tie up the system with recalls every time they had a problem with a policy?
And don’t tell me they wouldn’t start the second they knew it was possible.
As far as ole Sarah, even my stanch Republican friends and family members accepted that she’s a complete idiot. I believe her contract with Fox expires in September. It’ll be interesting to see if Ailes renews her again. If he doesn’t you damn well she’ll show up somewhere.
Big money from the Koch heads, Fox “News”, Koch Cain and the rest of the frauds poured money into Walker’s campaign. Big money won-this time.
The masses needs to get their act together because Wall Street and their well-funded allies are out to get the working-class people.
It’s now or never!
My curiosity comes from the fact that “purely policy reasons” is usually THE prime motivation for “ousting” any elected official. If the GOP didn’t have “purely policy reasons,” then none of the clowns who ran for the nomination would’ve bothered running in the first place.
Why did all the Teabaggers get elected in 2010 (replacing State legislators, governors, even US Representatives and Senators) if they weren’t running for “purely policy reasons?”
No one who runs for an elected office runs on the platform of “Well, I like the current ____________ but I think I could do the job as well as s/he by continuing the policies s/he’s currently doing.” (Okay—perhaps there’s a rare case of someone from one party replacing his/her party’s current elected official who’s chosen to retire from office. But that is the exception, not the rule.)
Remember the 2008 campaign? Democrats were describing the GOP candidate as “McSame” while (blindly—IMO) following Obama’s “hope and CHANGE” ideas. Most of that “hope and change” was based on Obama’s supporters belief that, at the core, they were electing someone for “purely policy reasons.” Dubya hadn’t offered any sense of “hope” during his time in office and certainly hadn’t really done much in the way of positive “change” and McCain was slammed as offering neither. So, “hope and change” was basically “purely policy reasons.”
That’s why I just don’t get what you meant by that particular phrase. Any election that DOESN’T produce a candidate who’s running for “purely policy reasons” and hoping to defeat the incumbent (whether the candidate’s on the left or on the right—or even within the same party, as with Sen Lugar’s defeat by a more extremist Republicon), and you don’t really have an election.
Her supporters won’t even acknowledge that, in the absolute best case scenario, this still proves that Palin has piss-poor judgement of who to pal around with. I mean six domestic terrorist leaders while running for Vice President…
Just… wow.
Walker had to play every dirty trick in the book, from the robocalls to accusations that employers who support Walker threatened employees with their job if they voted against him. And he still won by the skin of his teeth.
Palin would be wise to acknowledge that.