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.