Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Captain Ed gets one wrong (Updated)

Gov. Palin is on the record against repeal of DADT
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Here are four words we never thought we would be writing: Ed Morrissey is wrong. We've been following Ed since he was blogging at Captain's Quarters, and only very rarely do we find ourselves in disagreement with him or notice that he hasn't done due diligence before putting up a post. In this case, it's the latter.
"Sarah Palin has remained silent on the issue of repealing 'don’t ask, don’t tell,' which Congress passed in the lame-duck session — at least until now."
That's simply not true. In February of last year, Gov. Palin appeared on "Fox News Sunday," and host Chris Wallace raised the DADT issue:
WALLACE: "Should the rule 'don't ask -- don't tell' for the Military be repealed?"

PALIN: "I don't think so right now. I'm surprised that the President spent that on his State of the Union speech when he only spent about nine percent of his time in the State of the Union on national security issues. And I say that because there are other things to be worried about right now with the Military."
So, no, Gov. Palin has not "remained silent" on DADT, and as of February 7, 2010 at least, she was opposed to repeal of the policy.

Ed is absolutely correct, however, in laboring to point out that "retweeting does not necessarily connote agreement. " But in this situation, it actually may do that. It all depends on how you interpret exactly what the governor was agreeing with. To us, it appeared that Tammy Bruce was calling liberals hypocrites for championing gay issues while denigrating gays at the same time by using epithets to refer to them. We could be wrong here, but that seems to us what Sarah Palin was agreeing with -- they hypocrisy of the left -- not necessarily that DADT should be repealed, an action she was opposed to on the only occasion we know of when she addressed the issue.

The real shame here is that this particular Twitter message garnered so much attention, distracting from a subsequent tweet about gasoline prices and ways the Obama administration has contributed to their escalation. This is a pocketbook issue which affects us all, given an economy in which the prices of other key commodities are also on the rise while unemployment remains at unacceptably high levels.

It's still the economy, stupid.

Update: Politico's Andy Barr also didn't do his homework:
"Palin has not spoken publicly about the end of the ban on gays serving openly in the military..."
As we clearly demonstrated in this post, Gov. Palin has indeed "spoken publicly" on DADT. In Politico's case, failure to do a simple Google search doesn't surprise us. The leftist website never lets the facts get in the way of its anti-Palin agenda.

- JP

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