“The question here is: is the GOP elite serious about limited government? Or not... It explains why the GOP Establishment flinches when a Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or Christine O'Donnell or Sharron Angle or Joe Miller step forth onto the stage nationally or within their states.”- JP
"You know, what? A year ago, I would have said, please don't even consider third-party. We've got to shore up what is good, and strong and principled within the Republican Party. And we've got to run on a Republican ticket, stand strong on the planks and the strong platform that is the GOP.Asked in a follow up question whether a third party wouldn't split the vote and help reelect Obama, the governor acknowledged "that would be the fear," but added:
Well, I think conditions have changed in this last year, where after the November midterm elections, we swept in a new crop of hard-core fiscal conservatives with a lot of common sense who have solutions that they want to see applied in order to get the economy back on the right track.
Well, too many in the GOP are still resistant and resisting that movement of this new crop of common sense conservatives. And if they are not careful in the GOP, there will be a third-party rise up, just like back in the day when the wigs finally went away and Republicans rose up. That is what the GOP should be fearing today, is the electorate will get fed up with business as usual in the GOP and a third-party will rise up.
Not that I want to see that. Because I still have belief, strongly, that the GOP planks are best for our country. But, they have just the machine that runs the GOP has got to be careful."
"But Sean, where the GOP though is still missing the boat is, look where we are today. We're on day 760 something of no budget in the federal government and that is the Democrats' fault.Asked again later in the interview whether she would support Trump if he run as a third party candidate, she said:
And yet the public, for the most part is unaware of that, because the GOP doesn't have a concerted aggressive message against the Democrats being derelict in their duty to pass a budget.
Another point that the Republicans are missing right now that could be an opportunity to invite the third party in, and if they don't want to see a third party run, they'd better get their stuff together, is with Obamacare, they had promised, so many of them had promised, running on a platform of repealing Obamacare, and now some of them are kind of vacillating saying, well, maybe we can tweak it and not just repeal it and replace it. So, that's another point that they're missing there.
They're quite a few issues that the GOP had better get their stuff together on in order to make sure that Obama does not have another four years."
"You know, again, I still want to have that hope in the GOP that they are going to stand strong. And that there will be that very aggressive attempt and success in letting Americans know that we can do better. And we don't have to settle for the Obama, Reid and still Pelosi agenda that is part of Washington. I still have faith in the Republican Party that we can get this together.When Hannity asked her if she would consider running third party in this election cycle, she said:
What I mean Sean, by conditions changing, over the year, has been a result of that midterm election and seen that Tea Party Movement, independent Americans bringing in new people there to represent us in Congress.
And yet, still not seeing the transitional change that needs to take place in Washington, as a result of new people coming in. That has been a disappointment. I still have hope though that we can turn things around and we can get it together, so a third party wouldn't be necessary."
"I don't foresee that right now."Most political observers, especially those of us who have closely followed Gov. Palin's political career, understood the point Sarah Palin was trying to get across to the Republican Party with her responses to the third party questions. One notable exception is The American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord, whose eyebrow -- if not both of them -- still appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of his hairline. We wonder if he has slept since the interview aired Friday night.
I know you can remember. She made liberals foam. Go nuts. Crazy nuts. And when some of us tried to point out that she was following a path trod by other conservatives from a young Richard Nixon to an old Ronald Reagan to a middle-aged Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush and Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter -- the path of most hated conservative in the land -- we were told (indignantly!) that this wasn't so…that it really was all about Sarah herself. She was just…just…well…fill in the epithet of your choice.We have just one minor disagreement with Jeffrey Lord. When the left is done with Scott Walker, it's not bloody likely that "someone now unknown" will be thrown into the middle of Alinsky Memorial Coliseum to face the lions. It will be "deja vu all over again," because they don't consider the demonization of Gov. Palin to be complete. As Aaron Goldstein succinctly phrased it at the IC Blog:
Suddenly…Sarah Palin turns out NOT to be the most hated conservative in America. Uh-uh. The crown has been rudely snatched and jammed on someone else's head. That honor has now reverted to a white guy. This one named… Scott Walker. Shoved into the coliseum as the lions roar… he's Hitler. He's Mussolini. He's a Nazi, a Fascist, a racist, a tool of billionaires. He's so bad he makes Sarah Palin look reassuringly plain old vanilla.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is what happens when a conservative or even someone who is not a movement conservative but flies enough conservative colors -- becomes the focus of left-wing wrath. What we are watching in real time is the demonization of Scott Walker by the left…a process recently devoted exclusively to Sarah Palin and before that to George W., the talk radio stars, Ann Coulter, the Fox crew.
The irony is that this process is now becoming familiar to more and more people -- more people get the game. Which has two interesting side effects.
One, people begin to realize what the real game is -- discrediting conservatism itself by using one star as a target. The old Alinsky trick of picking the target, freezing it, personalizing it etc.
And two -- by focusing on the newest target with such fierce animosity, it makes the last target fade into… dare we say it… the comfort of a reassuringly familiar face...
"Make no mistake. Sarah Palin is still in the crosshairs."This goes double if she gets into the 2012 presidential race as expected.
“Imagine that Governor Palin had become president. Imagine that she had announced that Roe versus Wade in her view was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone’s right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment.”- JP
WASHINGTON- JP
January 21, 2013
Barely twenty-four hours after her inauguration as America's first woman chief executive, President Sarah Palin announced today that Attorney General Mark Levin has been instructed to stop defending Roe v. Wade and abortion in a wave of fresh lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.
[...]
At the White House, a spokesman said Palin herself was never one to be "grappling" with her personal view of abortion, and has always personally opposed Roe v. Wade as "unnecessary and unfair."
Levin wrote to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that Palin has concluded Roe v. Wade fails to meet a rigorous standard under which courts view with suspicion any laws targeting minority groups who have suffered a history of discrimination. "The unborn, perhaps the most vulnerable minority group in history, have a severe history of discrimination," added the new attorney general.
[...]
The decision brought an angry response from Planned Parenthood. In what sources say was a heated phone conversation with the head of the pro-abortion group, one shocked Justice Department career attorney said the Attorney General was heard to say:
"Get off the phone you big dope."
[More]
First, he offered $100,000 to Chris Matthews to find any example where Sarah Palin or Levin himself had "promoted the murder of anybody."Of course Matthews and the other irresponsible leftists who are making their wild accusations will neither put up nor shut up. They never do, because they have nothing to back up their
The direct challenge to Matthews took place shortly after Levin had played clips of Matthews suggesting Levin's passionate radio shows were "angry" and apparently implying that Levin's shows and those of talker Michael Savage had some responsibility for the Tucson murders. The allegation came on the heels of a specific allegation by left-wing Pima County Sheriff insisting Rush Limbaugh was at fault, while MSNBC's Keith Olbermann demanded Palin "repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics."
[...]
"I challenge Chris Matthews, I'll put $100,000 on the table, to find any example where Sarah Palin has promoted the murder of anybody," said Levin -- specifically excluding terrorists and the Taliban.
[...]
He's waiting for a very specific allegation "because I'm going to sue." In federal court.
[More]
Sarah Palin was right.This Orwellian nightmare serves to remind us, Lord points out, that Governor Palin took almost all of the heat for taking this issue, buried deep as it was in thousands of pages of obscure legislative doublespeak, and raising it to the national consciousness. Her critics have been proven wrong by Berwick, Reich and other authoritarian leftists. Knowing the Palinophobes as we do, no one expects them to own up and give her due credit for being right.
John Boehner -- make that Speaker-elect of the House John Boehner -- was right.
[...]
In other words, the 2009 charge leveled by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the then-House Minority Leader Boehner that Obama fully intended to set up what Palin termed government "death panels" -- panels that Boehner said would set the government on the road to euthanasia -- is no longer a charge.
It's reality. By executive fiat -- in this case a new Medicare rule issued by Obama Medicare chief Dr. Donald Berwick.
Palin, who made the charge on her Facebook page on August 7, 2009 during the health care debates, came under a fusillade of scornful and demeaning political attacks from political opponents after pointedly saying this about the prospect of death panels:And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.Her famous sharp criticism was enough for the plan to be quickly dropped by Congress.
Now, with Americans absorbed in a festive holiday and ignoring Washington momentarily, the Obama administration has found a way to achieve its death panel goal anyway...
[...]
Governor Palin has been vindicated. Speaker Boehner has been vindicated.
And Palin's critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all over their faces. Obama's Dr. Berwick has re-ignited one of the most hotly controversial issues of the entire health care debate just as a conservative ascendancy prepares to take power in the next Congress. With no less than Boehner himself taking the gavel from Nancy Pelosi as the new Speaker of the House.
What does this new rule say and do, exactly?
It inserts the federal government in end-of-life planning, precisely as Palin said was Obama's intention. Not, as was true of its original legislative formulation, every five years. But annually. No one of any sense objects to an individual and doctor having end-of-life discussions about living wills and such whenever they wish. Only the Obama administration and its obsession for control wants the government to incentivize the issue so that doctors must raise it annually, a system that on its face pressures the most deeply vulnerable of Americans in the most Orwellian of terms to end their lives.
Control and pressure. Pressure and control. This is the only two-step philosophical/political dance liberals know. It is, as it were, primal. And the Berwick Medicare rule, constructed in secret and released on Christmas Day when it no one is looking, is a perfect example -- if hardly the only example -- of how the Obama Administration views its role. Control and pressure. Pressure… and control.
Versus the conservative concept (shorthand version) of liberty and freedom.
And Palin's critics in particular now have more than holiday eggnog all over their faces.
[More]
Yesterday, the Country Class Sarah Palin went on the Country Class Sean Hannity Show to endorse the Country Class Christine O' Donnell over the Ruling Class Mike Castle in the Delaware U.S. Senate primary.Lord also traces the genesis of the warfare between these two classes in his TAS essay "The Ruling Class Hits Christine O'Donnell" here.
And thus far, the Ruling Class Castle has refused to accept an invitation from the Country Class Mark Levin Show to discuss his Senate race.
Both moments are clues to the status of different players in the increasingly vehement rebellion that every poll in America is picking up.
Somewhere it always seems there's a need to refresh on the savage attacks on Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan or, to be current and with no need to refresh, today's Sarah Palin. Heck, why limit this to running for office? Attacks by conservatives on more prominent conservatives occur these days with the same certainty as the attraction of gin to tonic. Google names like...oh...say...Limbaugh, Rush and you'll get the idea.We couldn't agree more. These attacks on Reagan conservatives by Vichy Republicans and -- as Lord credits Mark Levin for describing Conservative Lites -- "conservatives who are more Republican than conservative" have become worse than tiresome and noxious. The Lites should be thoroughly skewered every time they do it.
These attacks are so utterly, utterly predictable although I'm sure that a Palin or O'Donnell still finds the sensation amazing as the arrow enters between their shoulder blades.
[...]
It is now Christine O'Donnell's turn to feel that startling arrow-in-the-back sensation that comes with this.
Conservatism is not a candidate. It's a movement. Based on a set of rock-solid principles. The fight always is to move the ball forward. The quarterback of the moment is…Fox News Alert….always flawed in some fashion. We could and can pick endlessly at the quarterback who is on the field. The real question is …now and always….are we moving the ball? Elections will be won. They will be lost. The objective is to move the ball.
Christine O'Donnell has the ball. Mike Castle plays for the other side wearing the Republican jersey. Which is why he wants the ball. This confuses many -- as it is designed to do.
But Riehlworld and Levin have both gotten it right.
