Palin's Big Lies Strike Big Targets While Her Assurances are Reminiscent of (Election-Winning) "Compassionate Conservatism"

Sarah Palin is the kind of Republican candidate who drives the press insane, because she keeps making statements that are barely true or completely false, but her supporters eat it up and there's nothing the press can do about it.  They try to juxtapose her with assertions with their realities, but she has become smart enough not to lie and exaggerate about things that are easily fact checked.

She goes for the high-profile issues about which neither the public nor the politicians are sure and honest, and she makes signature statements that defame the opposition while crystalizing her in the minds of her supporters as someone who tells the truths that the politicians refuse to hear.

For example, The Root says that:

The Republican mischief maker is at it again, and this time her target is the Treasury secretary.

 

Earlier this week, Sarah Palin demonstrated why certain stars should never dabble in politics when she said the Republican Party platform is "best for America" because "[i]t's all about respecting equality." Never mind the document calls for etching discrimination into the Constitution with an amendment banning same-sex marriage. Well, yesterday, Palin was at it again.

This is precisely how Ronald Reagan won the presidency:  by conjuring Black welfare queens who were at the heart of all of America's problems, while promising that America (not the Republican Party) was a land of liberty and freedom.  Likewise, Sarah Palin knows how to tell the big lies with a straight and even enthusiastic face, insisting that the Republican platform is about "respecting equality" even though it specifically singles out gays for unequal treatment.

Likewise, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan said America had equality for all, while winking to his color-aroused antagonist supporters that, if necessary, he would send US troops to South Africa to maintain the "normalcy" (of apartheid).  When Reagan refused to acknowledge the contradictions inherent in his pro-American but anti-Black nonsense, there was nothing the press or Black politicians could do to turn the truth against him.  Americans wanted to believe his nonsense, and they weren't going to let mere human beings from the media spoil their party.

More substantively and truthfully, Sarah Palin (let's start calling her Governor Palin, lest we underestimate her) points out that Treasury Secretary Geithner has issued deadline after deadline on the debt ceiling, without any obvious proof that missing his deadlines had any clear effect on anything in the nation.  She has a point when she asks why we should be hurried into something like the bank bailouts that were far more expensive than necessary and haven't proved to fix the mortgage crisis or high unemployment.

The Root continues:

This time sputtering nonsense about Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's warnings about the danger of not raising the national debt limit.

Palin took time out from stomping all over Mitt Romney's announcement in New Hampshire that he is running for president to cast aspersions on Geithner while she was at a clambake in New Hampshire.

"If the debt ceiling were to be increased based on what I believe to be Timothy Geithner's false statements to the American public -- that a catastrophe would befall us all if the debt ceiling isn't raised -- a failure of leadership in the House would be if we were to cave and believe that."

And what did Palin mean by "false statements"? The half-term governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee explained that Geithner has "given us now four different due dates where catastrophe would befall us if the debt ceiling is not raised. ... Well, once bitten, twice shy. How many more times are we going to have to hear this date change?"

I've always been against Obama's white guy economists and bankers; they showed no concern for Blacks and homeowners or the lower and middle class when they were raking in the dough as bankers, so why should we believe that they have our best interests at heart now.   Nothing they have done has benefited much of anyone but themselves and their collegial banking cronies.

This is a serious weakness for the Obama Administration and Palin can't be faulted for pointing it out.  There are billions of dollars left in program coffers to help the people losing their homes, and Geithner can't be bothered to work out a populist program to spend the money that has already been approved by Congress.

Obama's upper-crust banking friends are a liability for him today and in the future, just as they were when they came on board.  The tone was set publicly when Obama chose Lawrence H. Summers as his chief economic adviser, even though as President of Harvard University Summers had very publicly, in a speech to a women's forum, doubted the relative intelligence of women and Blacks.

I'd hate to see the Republicans win in 2012, but the Summers/Geithner axis is as good a reason for change as any.  I wish I could argue that Palin's advisers would be even worse, but with extensions for tax cuts for the richest and a full-on Government refusal to help those whose mortgages are under water, it's harder to imagine (at the moment) how the Republicans will be considerably worse.

Palin might be the Republican nominee.  I'm saying so again today, and I said it on July 30, 2009, as Palin resigned the Alaska Governor's Office: 

Some blogs are saying her resignation speech was terrible and will exclude her from contention for the Republican nomination in 2012, but I think they're probably wrong.

In spite of the fact that I don't like Sarah Palin anymore than I would have wanted McCain for president (see my Truth About McCain Blog), I think Sarah Palin's speech was actually pretty good.

She mentioned the troops and the military several times. She described the state of Alaska in glowing and engaging terms that would make people less resistant to having a president from Alaska.

Palin talked about her commitment to all of the issues are seen as most important by the extreme right voters who decide the Republican presidential nominee: small government, low taxes, helping and respecting small businesses, opposition to abortion, commitment to family (she said that was part of the reason she was resigning).

I actually think that, for what she was trying to accomplish, which was to announce her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, the speech was very effective. Remember: She's not trying to convince liberals, leftists or the media. She's trying to create a coalition of right-wing hate groups who will support her candidacy in 2012, and I think she's doing that. At least, I think her speech was a successful run at it.

Don't count Palin out. The very fact that she is known all over the Internet for disparaging Blacks and Native Americans will HELP HER with the Republicans who vote in Republican primaries.

She's got an entire dead bear in her office in Alaska, which gives her the 100% support of the NRA going in.

The press ridiculed Ronald Reagan because he got his facts wrong.  The Republican right-wing extremists adored Reagan because he was willing to tell such big lies in the defense of right-wing interests.  In Massachusetts, Palin invented gunfire and ringing bells to go along with her comments about the Ride of Paul Revere.

Listen closely to the last phrase of her comments, to the effect that, "the Revolution was fought with guns and we're not giving up our guns".  In other words, 'Revolt against the present Government (led by President Obama) and Sarah Palin supports your right to keep and bear arms.'  If that wrong-facts sound-bite gets her the support of the gun rights lobbies, then it was worth it no matter how badly she garbled the facts of Paul Revere.

Pay attention!  Paul Revere is more "American" with guns blaring and bells ringing than without them, even if these details are more Star Wars than reality.

Palin has never taken an official action that was manifestly liberal or non-conservative.  She showed the appropriate Republican disrespect for Native Americans as Governor of Alaska and she was as ruthless as Karl Rove when dealing with those who crossed her, even accidentally.

The only reason for Republicans not to nominate Palin is that she's a woman, but then they nominated her once in spite of that, and the sitting President is a Black man.  If Republicans come to feel that Palin is the heir to Reagan's legacy of telling big lies and making the media and liberals apoplectic, then Republicans will nominate Sarah Palin.

The only question is whether she can stick to Republican generalities (support for guns; robust imperialism; anti-abortion; love for the middle class combined with opposition to policies that would help the middle and lower-class), then Sarah Palin could be a formidable candidate for the presidency.  "Morning in American" platitudes will get you everywhere with 51% of America, in the middle of a recession.