Plurality of Americans see George Washington as greatest president

Mika Brzezinski's choice failed to make the cut.
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A plurality of adults agreed with Sarah Palin in a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, naming the first president of the United States as our greatest founding father:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American adults shows that 43% say George Washington is the greatest founding father of our country, up 11 points from last year. Thomas Jefferson comes in second with 24% who see him has the greatest found father, followed by Benjamin Franklin with 16%.

Just five percent (5%) see both John Adams and James Madison as the greatest founding fathers...

Washington has been at the top of this list since 2006.

Data released earlier shows that Americans continue to strongly believe in the nation’s founding ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence. While most believe that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed, only 23% believe the federal government today has such consent.

In fact, 45% believe that the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them is now as big as the gap between the American colonies and England during the 18th Century.

As usual, Gov. Palin is totally in sync with most Americans on the question. Clueless liberals had mocked the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate for choosing Washington, telling Glenn Beck in a in January, 2010 interview that she admired the father of our country because he refused efforts by some of his supporters at the time of the nation's founding who wanted to elevate the general to the status of royalty. Instead, Washington served two terms as president and then returned to his Mount Vernon home.

Most clueless of those clueless liberals was and continues to be MSDNC's Mika Brzezinski, who named Abraham Lincoln as her favorite "founder":

Ah, karma. In the middle of this MS-NBC gigglefest over Sarah Palin’s response to Glenn Beck on which Founding Father she likes best, Mika Brzezinski offers her opinion on the best Founding Father — who wasn’t born until 20 years after the US adopted its present Constitution.

Too bad the Civil War president was not there for the founding, as it occurred years before he was even born:

Lesson: Don't laugh at and mock someone when you are totally clueless about the subject.

Sadly, Mika doesn't seem to have stumbled over any clues in the last year and a half.

- JP

Palin following the example of George Washington

Paul Whitfield takes a little-known fact -- that Lt. Col. George Washington quit the Virginia militia in 1754 -- and has a bit of fun with it:

Imagine if you will how the media would've handled the story, if only our modern news creatures had been there to impart their instant wisdom to colonial America.

"Georgy Porgy is one nutty puppy," pundit Maureen Dowd wrote on hearing the news. "George wanted everyone to know that he's not having fun in the Virginia militia and people are being mean to him and he doesn't feel like serving anymore."

Todd Purdum, reporting for Vanity Fair, said the soldier's behavior has been a source of concern.

"Several told me, independently of one another," Purdum wrote, "that they had consulted the definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder' — a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy — in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and thought it fit Washington perfectly."

Not to be outdone by speculative "reporting," Colonialist News Network anchor Rick Sanchez asked on the air: "Is there anything going on with him that perhaps may lead him to want to quit the Virginia militia, and the one thing that's still left out there, hey, could young George have gotten a girl pregnant?"

- JP